The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(29)

I found Bud asleep in the parking lot and he drove me to a nearby saloon, in fact to more than one. I remember one particular place where a portly young woman took off her clothes to music, while dancing on the bar counter within reach of my hand. I had never seen an ecdysiast before; toward the end she was wearing nothing but seven beads, four of them sweat. I think that was the place we were chucked out of.

I know I went to bed but I must admit the details are a bit fuzzy: I’m not sure I even brushed my teeth.





10





Then we began to ride. My soul

Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll

Freshening and fluttering in the wind.

Past hopes already lay behind.





The Last Ride Together





I awoke feeling positively chipper but the feeling didn’t last. By the time I had dressed and packed I was being shaken with hangover like a rat in the grip of a keen but inexperienced terrier. I made it down to the hotel bar by easy stages (take the slow lift, never the express one) and the barman had me diagnosed and treated in no time at all. Your actual hangover, he explained, is no more than a withdrawal syndrome; halt the withdrawal by injecting more of what is withdrawing and the syndrome vanishes with a rustle of black wings. It seemed to make good sense. His prescription was simply Scotch and branch water – he swore a great oath that the branch water was freighted in fresh and fresh each morning from the Appalachian mountains, would you believe it? I tipped him with no niggardly hand.

Well medicated, but by no means potted, I paid my bill at the desk, collected a spotless Silver Ghost from a reluctant brownish chap and drove carefully away in the general direction of New Mexico. Posterity will want to know that I was wearing my Complete American Disguise: a cream tussore suit, sunglasses and a cocoa-coloured straw hat with a burnt-orange ribbon. The effect was pretty sexy, I don’t mind telling you. Mr Abercrombie would have bitten Mr Fitch if he’d seen it and the Tailor and Cutter would have been moved to tears.

Curiously, I was afraid again. I felt obscurely that this land – ‘where law and custom alike are based on the dreams of spinsters’ – was nevertheless a land where I might well get hurt if I were not careful – or even if I were careful.

By the time that I was quite clear of the city’s unlovely faubourgs and purlieus I needed petrol: the Silver Ghost is a lovely car but its best friend would have to admit that its m.’s per g. are few. I selected a petrol station that looked as though it could use the business and drew up. This was near a place called Charlottesville on the edge of the Shenandoah National Park. The attendant was standing with his back to me, arms akimbo, saying, ‘Howd’ya like that guy?’ and staring after a large powder-blue car which was vanishing at great speed down the road. He didn’t realize my presence until I switched off the engine, then he double-took the Rolls in the most gratifying way, whispering ‘shee-it!’ again and again. (I was to hear enough admiring ‘shee-its’ in the next few days to refertilize the entire Oklahoma dust bowl.) He giggled like a virgin as he dipped the nozzle into the petrol tank and sped me on my way with one last dungy praise spattering my ears. I wondered vaguely what the powder-blue car had done to earn his disapproval.

I got a little lost after that, but an hour later I hit Interstate Highway 81 at Lexington and made excellent time down through Virginia. Once over the State line into Tennessee I called it quits for the day and booked in at a Genuine Log Kabins Motel. The yellow-haired, slack-mouthed, fat-arsed landlady wiggled her surplus flesh at me in the most revolting way: she looked about as hard to get as a haircut and at about the same price. Everything in my Kabin was screwed to the floor: the landlady told me that newlyweds often furnish their entire apartments with stuff they steal from motels, they spend the whole night unscrewing things, she told me with a coy giggle, indicating that she could think of better ways of passing the time. Like being screwed to the floor, I dare say.

The sheets were bright red. ‘By golly,’ I told them, ‘I’d blush too, if I were you.’

For supper I had some Old Fashioned Mountain Boys’ Corned Beef Hash; you’d think it would be delicious in Tennessee but it wasn’t, you know; not a patch on Jock’s. I drank some of my store of Red Hackle De Luxe and went to sleep instantly – you’d never have unscrewed me.

You can’t get an early morning cup of tea in an American motel, not even for ready money; I wished I had brought a portable apparatus along. You’ve no idea how hard it is to get dressed without a cheering cup inside you. I hobbled to the restaurant and drank a whole pot of their coffee, which was excellent and nerved me to try the sweet Canadian bacon and hot cakes. Not at all bad, really. I noticed that the owner of the powder-blue car – or one very like it – had selected the same motel, but I didn’t see him, or her. I idly wondered whether they’d done much unscrewing. For my part, I checked out with a clear conscience, I hadn’t stolen anything for days.

I hardly got lost at all that morning. I was on US 40 in not much more than an hour and sailed clear across Tennessee on it, wonderful scenery. I had lunch in Nashville: spareribs and spoon bread and the finest jukebox I ever saw: it was a privilege to sit in front of it. Dazed with hot pork and decibels I nearly stepped under the wheels of a powder-blue car as I stepped off the sidewalk (pavement). Now, at the last count I’m sure there were probably half a million powder-blue cars in the United States, but when pedestrians walk under their wheels American drivers usually turn a bit powder-blue themselves and lean out and curse you roundly, calling you ‘Buster’ if you happen to be at all portly. This one did not: he looked through me and drove on, a thick-set, jowly chap rather like my Mr Braun, the crown prince of fish and chips, but hatted and sunglassed to the point of anonymity.