The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(181)

The doctors were pleased with my jaw, they said it was mending well but my ear went bad and they had to cut some of it off, and then the rest of it. That was why Johanna was discharged quite a bit earlier than I was.

My homecoming was not jolly; Johanna had known about the ear but she was a bit taken aback when she saw me without it (I’d discharged myself the moment they took the bandages off) and she burst into tears – a thing I’d never seen her do before. I made a few jests about how she had never thought much of my looks anyway and the lop-sided effect might grow on her but she was inconsolable. I shall never understand women. You probably think you do but you’re wrong, you know. They’re not a bit like us.

In the end I took her gently to bed and we lay there hand in hand in the dark so that she could cry without my seeing her eyes get puffy and we listened to Le Nozze di Figaro which turned out to be a bad mistake: one forgets that it’s not nearly such a lighthearted piece for people who understand Italian. As Johanna does. When it came to Dove Sono she really broke down and wanted to tell me all about what had happened on that dreadful night. This was too much for me, I simply wasn’t up to it; I rushed downstairs and fetched a tray of drinks and we both got a little drunk and then it was better, much better; but we both knew that I had let her down. Again. Well, that’s the price you pay for being a coward. I only wish one could be told exactly how much the instalments are, and when they are likely to fall due. A moral coward, you see, is simply someone who has read the fine print on the back of his Birth Certificate and seen the little clause which says ‘You can’t win’. He knows from then on that the smart thing to do is to run away from everything and he does so. But he doesn’t have to like it.

‘Jock,’ I said the next morning. ‘Mrs Mortdecai will not be down to breakfast.’ I looked at him levelly. He twigged. His good eye crumpled up into a huge wink, which left the glass one – carelessly inserted – leering up at the cornice. Sure enough, he had read my mind and the eggs and bacon, when they arrived, were mounted on delicious fried bread and accompanied by fried potatoes, all quite counter to Johanna’s ‘Standing Order Concerning Mr Mortdecai’s Waistline’. Well, dash it, why should I persecute my waistline; it’s never done me any harm. Yet.

The last fried potato had captured the last runlet of egg-yolk and was about to home in on the Mortdecai waistline when George and Sam appeared. They looked grave and friendly for I too, now, had suffered, I was a member of the club – but they both looked askance at the marmalade and richly-buttered toast which Jock brought in at that moment. Sam never breakfasts and George believes that breakfast is something that gentlemen eat at a quarter past dawn, not at half-past noon.

I waved them to chairs and offered them richly-buttered toast and marmalade. They glanced at it with ill-concealed longing but refused: they were strong; strong.

I knew most of their news: there had been only two rapes in the intervening period and one of those had been a bit suspect: a young Jersey girl who was already a teeny bit pregnant by a fiancé who had absent-mindedly joined a boat going to Australia. The other incident bore all the marks of being ‘one of ours’ but the victim was a hopeless witness, even by female standards, and could add nothing to our dossier.

George and Sam had been patrolling in a desultory and half-hearted way but with no results except that Sam said he had chased a mackintoshed suspect for half a mile but had lost him in the outbuildings of one of George’s tenant-farmers. A search had produced nothing but a pair of bicycle-clips in a disused cow-stable.

Sonia was quite recovered. Violet was much worse: clearly catatonic now, having to be watched night and day.

George was withdrawn and morose; Sam was in a state of suppressed hysteria which I found disturbing: long silences punctuated by random and bitter witticisms of poor quality. Not at all the Sam I had known and loved.

News exhausted, we looked at one another dully.

‘Drinks?’ I asked, dully.

George looked at his wristwatch; Sam opened his mouth and shut it again. I poured drinks. We drank three each, although we had had no luncheon. Johanna joined us. By the hard light of noon she looked older by ten years but her air of command was still there.

‘Well, have you boys made a plan?’ she asked, looking at me, bless her.

We made three apologetic grimaces. Sam started to sketch out a smile but gave up at the attempt. George cleared his throat. We looked at him wearily.

‘Let’s go fishing,’ he said. ‘My bass-boat’s all new-painted and varnished and they’re putting it into the water tomorrow. Do us all good, a bit of a sail. Try for some mackerel, eh?’

Sam and I, by our silences, registered total disapprobation. George on land is merely brigadier-like; at sea his mission seems to be to prove that Captain Bligh was a softy.

‘Oh yes, Charlie, do go!’ cried Johanna. ‘A bit of a sail will do you so much good, and I would adore some fresh mackerels.’

I shifted sulkily in my chair.

‘Or pollocks,’ she added, ‘or basses or breams. Please, Charlie?’

‘Oh, very well,’ I said. ‘If Sam’s coming.’

‘Of course,’ said Sam bitterly, ‘of course, of course.’

‘Wonderful!’ said Johanna.

‘Nine o’clock, then?’ said George.

‘Dark by that time,’ I said.