The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(36)

I had her placed now: Viennese Jewess, the loveliest women in the world and the cleverest. I pulled myself together.

‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘Please let us start again. My name is Mortdecai.’ I put my heels together and bowed over her hand; she had the long and lovely fingers of her race and they were as hard as nails.

‘Mine is Johanna. You know my married name.’ I got the impression that she pronounced it as infrequently as possible. She motioned me back into the sofa – all her gestures were beautiful – and stood there, legs astride. Looking up at her from the depths of that bloody sofa was awkward; lowering my gaze I found myself staring at her jean-gripped crotch, fourteen inches from my nose. (I use fourteen in the Borgesian sense of course.)

‘Those are beautiful pistols,’ I said, desperately. She did something astonishingly swift and complicated with her right hand and, simultaneously it seemed, a Tiffany butt was six inches from my face. I took it from her respectfully – look, the Dragoon Colt is over a foot long and weighs more than four pounds: unless you’ve handled one you can’t begin to understand the strength and skill you need to flip it about casually. This was an intimidating young woman.

It was indeed a very beautiful pistol. I spun the cylinder – it was loaded in all chambers but, correctly, one nipple was uncapped for the hammer to ride on. There was much splendid engraving and I was startled to see the initials J.S.M.

‘Surely these did not belong to John Singleton Mosby?’ I asked, awestruck.

‘I think that was his name. A cavalry raider or something of that sort. My husband never tires of telling how much he paid for them – for myself, I forget, but it seemed an excessive amount.’

‘Yes,’ I said, cupidity stabbing me like a knife. ‘But are these not rather big weapons for a lady? I mean, you handle them beautifully but I should have thought something like a Colt Lightning or the Wells Fargo model perhaps …?’

She took the pistol, checked the position of the hammer and prestidigitated it back into the holster.

‘My husband insists on these big ones,’ she said, boredly. ‘It is something to do with the castration complex or the organ inferiority or some such nastiness. But you must be thirsty, my husband tells me you are often thirsty, I shall bring you some drink.’ With that she left me. I began to feel a bit castrated myself.

She was back in about two minutes, having changed into a minimal cotton frock and followed by a drinks-laden peon. Her manner, too, had changed and she sank down beside me with a friendly smile. Close beside me. I sort of inched away a bit. Cringed away would be better. She looked at me curiously for a moment, then giggled.

‘I see. My mother has been talking to you. Ever since she caught me when I was seventeen wearing nothing under my dress she has been convinced that I am a mare in heat. It is not true.’ She was making me a large, strong drink – the peon had been dismissed. ‘On the other hand,’ she continued, handing me the glass with a dazzling smile, ‘I have an unaccountable passion for men of your age and build.’ I simpered a little, making it clear that I recognized a joke and perhaps a mild tease.

‘Tee hee,’ I said. Then ‘Aren’t you having a drink?’

‘I never drink alcohol. I do not like to blunt my senses.’

‘Goodness,’ I babbled, ‘but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you’re not going to feel any better all day.’

‘But I feel lovely all day, every day. Feel me.’ I spilled quite a lot of my drink.

‘No, really,’ she said, ‘feel.’

I gingerly prodded a golden, rounded forearm.

‘Not there, stupid: here!’ She flipped a button open and two of the most beautiful breasts in the world sprang out, quite bare, hard and richly nippled. In all civility I could not decline to grasp one, indeed, my hand made the decision for me. My castration complex had vanished like an evil dream. She pulled my head down to her.

Much as I enjoy kissing girls’ nipples, I must say I usually feel a bit sheepish about it, don’t you? I’m reminded of fat old men sucking juicily at their teat-like cigars. However, the extravagance of Johanna’s response to my first tentative grazing on her lovely pastures was such as to dispel all embarrassment from my mind, replacing it with fears for my own health. She reared up like a tortured cat and wrapped herself around me as though she were in the last extremities of drowning. Her slim, calloused fingers grasped me with delicious ferocity and I soon ascertained that her policy on underwear had not changed since she was seventeen.

‘Wait,’ I said urgently, ‘shouldn’t I take a shower first? I’m filthy.’

‘I know,’ she snarled, ‘I love it. You smell like a horse. You are a horse.’

Obediently, I broke into a canter, urged by her drumming heels. I was glad she had taken her spurs off.

Descriptions of middle-aged art dealers being ravished are neither instructive nor edifying, so I shall draw a row of ‘frissons’ like a shower curtain across the extraordinary scene which followed. Here they are:

I was shown to my room by the barefooted hussy in the drawstring blouse. She smiled at me blandly, pointing her lavish bosom like a pair of pistols.

‘I am at your service while you stay at the Rancho, se?or,’ she said guilelessly. ‘My name is Josefina – that is, like Josephine.’