The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(28)

We ate in a sort of stall or booth, rather like the old-fashioned London chop house but flimsier. My steak was quite lovely but embarrassingly large: it seemed to be a cross-section through an ox. I had a salad with mine but Bud ordered a potato – such a potato; a prodigious tuber bred, he told me, on the plains of Idaho. I suppose I left about ten ounces of my steak and Bud quite coolly told the waiter (his name was Mac, too) to wrap it up for his dog and the waiter didn’t even flicker although they both knew quite well that it would constitute Mrs Bud’s supper that night. Steak is fearfully dear in Washington, as I daresay you know.

Bud may have licked me at the steak eating but I had him whipped at the liquor drinking. They have something there called, obscurely, High Balls, which we moved on to after our beer; he was no match for me at that game, quite outclassed. He eyed me, in fact, with a new respect. I believe I asked him to come and stay with me in London at one stage; at least I know I meant to.

As we left the bar a rather droll-looking citizen swayed across my path and asked, ‘Whaddaya, some kinova nut or sumpn?’ to which I replied in a matey phrase which I had heard Bud use to a fellow cabbie earlier in the day, as follows:

‘Ah, go blow it out your ass!’ (A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth; and a word spoken in due season, how good it is! Prov. XV: 23.)

To my dismay and puzzlement, the drunk chap took exception, for he hit me very hard in the face, making my nose bleed freely down my shirt. Vexed at this, I fear I retaliated.

When I was in one of those joke-and-dagger units in the war – yes, the Second World War, chicks – I went on one of those unarmed combat courses and, do you know, I was frightfully good at it, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me.

I popped the heel of my hand under his nose – so much better than a punch – then toed him hard in the cobblers and, as he quite understandably doubled up, drove my knee into what was left of his poor face. He sort of fell down, not unnaturally in the circumstances, and as a precaution I stamped on each of his hands as I stepped over him. Well, he did hit me first, you know, as I’m sure he’d be the first to admit. Bud, enormously impressed, hustled me outside while the saloon behind us applauded – pit, circle and gallery. An unpopular bloke, no doubt. I had very little trouble getting into the cab, although the driver’s seat had changed sides again.

All the beautiful young men at the Embassy hated me on sight, nasty little cupcakes, but they passed me through to the Ambassador with no more delay than was necessary to make them feel important. The Ambassador received me in his shirt sleeves, if you’ll believe it, and he, too, didn’t seem to fancy me much. He accepted my courtly, old-world salutations with what I can only describe as a honk.

Now, for most practical purposes the ordinary consumer can divide Ambassadors up into two classes: the thin ones who tend to be suave, well-bred, affable; and the fleshier chaps who are none of these things. His present Excellency definitely fell into the latter grade: his ample mush was pleated with fat, wormed with the great pox and so besprent with whelks, bubukles and burst capillaries that it seemed like a contour map of the Trossachs. His great plum-coloured gobbler hung slack and he sprayed one when he spoke. I couldn’t find it in my heart to love him but, poor chap, he was probably a Labour appointment: his corridors of power led only to the Gents.

‘I won’t beat about the bush, Mortdecai,’ he honked, ‘you are clearly an awful man. Here we are, trying to establish an image of a white-hot technological Britain, ready to compete on modern terms with any jet-age country in the world and here you are, walking about Washington in a sort of Bertie Wooster outfit as though you were something the Tourist Board had dreamed up to advertise Ye Olde Brytysshe Raylewayes.’

‘I say,’ I said, ‘you pronounced that last bit marvellously.’

‘Moreover,’ he ground on, ‘your ridiculous bowler is dented, your absurd umbrella bent, your shirt covered with blood and you have a black eye.’

‘You should see the other feller?’ I chirrupped brightly, but it didn’t go down a bit well. He was in his stride now.

‘The fact that you are quite evidently as drunk as a fiddler’s bitch in no way excuses a man of your age’ – a nasty one, that – ‘looking and behaving like a fugitive from a home for alcoholic music-hall artistes. I know little of why you are here and I wish to know nothing. I have been asked to assist you if possible, but I have not been instructed to do so: you may assume that I shall not. The only advice I offer is that you do not apply to this Embassy for help if and when you outrage the laws of the United States, for I shall unhesitatingly disown you and recommend imprisonment and deportation. If you turn right when you leave this room you will see the Chancery, where you will be given a receipt for your Silver Greyhound and a temporary civil passport in exchange for your Diplomatic one, which should never have been issued. Good day, Mr Mortdecai.’

With that, he started grimly signing letters or whatever it is that Ambassadors grimly sign when they want you to leave. I considered being horribly sick on his desk but feared that he might declare me a Distressed British Subject there and then, so I simply left the room in a marked manner and stayed not upon the order of my going. But I turned left as I went out of the room, which took me into a typists’ pool, through which I strolled debonairly, twirling my brolly and whistling a few staves of ‘Show Us Your Knickers, Elsie.’