The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(163)

I was a little taken aback. Not much of this made a great deal of sense to me, but it certainly didn’t sound like the ramblings of a drunkard.

‘They’ve done a lot of work on this in the Soviet Union,’ he went on, ‘and I must say that it does rather look as though their approach has been rather more intelligent than the Americans. I mean, they feel that things which are clearly outside the laws of science as at present understood cannot be examined by standard scientific methodology. Like trying to weigh neutrons on a grocer’s scales, do you see.’

‘That seems reasonable to me,’ I said. ‘I remember saying to one of those psychic/psychologic researchers from a comic new University – Lancaster? – that most poker-players are familiar with that rare and wonderful feeling which occurs perhaps once in a thousand hands, when they know they cannot lose: I told him that I’d had it twice and so strongly that I hadn’t looked at my hand, hadn’t drawn to it, had betted it to the hilt and had not been in the least surprised when I’d won. The researcher-twit’s reaction was to deal me singles from a cold pack of cards, inviting me to guess the colours. My results were nine per cent below random probability, or whatever they call it. That made me a liar in his eyes and him an idiot in mine. I could have told him, had he had the wit to ask, that the necessary conditions were that we should have been playing a real game for several hours, that I should have ingested perhaps a third of a bottle of brandy, that I should have been slightly ahead of my table-stakes by virtue of the ordinary run of cards and that, in short, I should have been in that state of drowsy euphoria where I was effectively asleep in all bodily departments except my card-sense.’

‘You couldn’t have put it better!’ cried Eric. ‘All the conditions were there, you see: mild fatigue, mild euphoria, mild depression from the brandy – I’ll bet your alpha-waves were at something very like ten cycles per second.’

‘No takers,’ I said.

‘Quite. By the way, I’m sorry to say “quite” all the time but much of my work lies amongst Americans and they expect Englishmen to say it.’

‘Just so,’ I said.

‘Whether these receptions, if that is a useful word, come because of me, or through me, or merely from me, I cannot say,’ he went on. ‘So far, however, like Raudive, I must admit that I have not encountered any words which were in a language I did not know, nor from any sources with which I was not familiar. This might seem to suggest that I am, as it were, the prime mover; but it could just be a communication-problem, don’t you think?’

I didn’t mean to say ‘quite’ but it seemed to slip out. I poured him some more Pastis and gave him a friendly grin, which probably looked more like a rictus.

‘Well,’ I boomed uncertainly, ‘let’s have a shot, shall we?’ He did his gazing act again for a minute or two, then put an arm protectively around the machine and sort of nestled against it as he switched on. He gazed moonily at the revolving tape for five long minutes, then shook his head violently and rewound the tape to the beginning.

‘No good?’ I asked cheerfully.

‘Can’t say.’ He turned the gain up to about half-strength and pressed the ‘play’ key. The machine began to emit the usual ‘white noise’ and machine noises and the gentle susurrus of his breathing; nothing else. I was embarrassed for him, wished he hadn’t started this nonsense, wondered how I could help him talk his way out of the let-down.

‘D’you hear it?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Oh, Christ, he really is barmy,’ I thought, making an apologetic grimace at him, as one does to chaps who point out pink elephants in the corners of a room. He turned up the gain – and I heard it. A soft, infinitely distant twittering, then a chuckle and a protracted cackle which rose and fell in an oddly odious way.

He tinkered with the volume and speed-controls here and there and played with the ‘cue’ and ‘review’ keys until suddenly, rising clear and sweet over a tangle of gibberish, a laughing voice quite clearly said:

‘FILTH! Filthy sot! Filthy sot? Filthyfilthy filthyfilthy filthyfilthy,’ on a rising scale which ended with a bat-like shrill which hurt the ears. Eric pressed the ‘pause’ key and looked at me, his eyes brimming with happy tears.

‘That’s my mummy,’ he said. ‘She worries about me a lot.’

There was a time when a remark like that would have given me no trouble: I would have tossed off a rejoinder both witty and respectful, but I am no longer the man I once was. All I could find to say was, ‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘she usually comes on before the others start and says something playful.’

‘Others?’

‘Oh, lots of others. Let’s try.’

He fiddled with the knobs and things again and, in a little while, isolated a hoarse, gin-soaked voice, choking with passion, which said ‘De profundis clamavt ad te, Domine’ again and again in tones of bitter reproach.

‘Not anyone from antiquity,’ said Eric. ‘That’s the sort of Latin that Irish priests still learn in their seminaries today. The speed’s not quite right; he sounds lighter than that if one can hit the exact speed.’

‘Oscar Wilde on his death-bed?’ I couldn’t help asking.

‘Do you know, you might be right, I really think you might.’