The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(64)

He leaned low over my bed and smiled seraphically, his beard splitting to disclose a row of teeth which seemed to be a random selection from Bassett’s celebrated Liquorice Allsorts.

‘SMERSH!’ he whispered. The garlic on his breath was like acetylene.

‘Where have you been lunching?’ I croaked.

‘In Manchester,’ he murmured happily. ‘In one of the only two fine Armenian restaurants in Western Europe. The other, I am happy to say, is also in Manchester.’

‘I shall have some Armenian food sent in,’ I said, ‘and with no further delay or shilly-shallying. See to it that there is lots of houmous. And whom do you really work for?’

‘You would be horribly sick. And I work for the Professor of Psychiatry in the University Hospital of North-East Manchester, if you want to know.’

‘I don’t care how sick I would be – it would provide employment for these nurses, who seem to be disgracefully underworked. And I don’t believe a word of this North-East Manchester nonsense: only London is allowed to have points of the compass, everyone knows that. You are clearly one of these impostors, probably struck off the register for using an unsterilized button-hook.’

He leaned close to me again.

‘Arseholes,’ he murmured.

‘That too, probably,’ I rejoined.

We became rather friends at that point – was it what he would have called aversion-therapy? – and he agreed that he might see his way to sending in a little houmous and hot Armenian bread and perhaps a touch of that lovely sour-bean salad with a chick-pea or two sculling about in it. He also said that I might be allowed a visitor.

‘Who would visit me?’ I asked, shedding another ready tear.

‘There’s droves of them,’ he leered, ‘queues of juicy little shicksas wanking in the waiting-room; it’s becoming quite a health-hazard.’

‘Oh, bollocks,’ I said.

‘Suck ’em,’ he replied. Salt of the earth, some of these doctors.

Having settled the amenities he became less human and got down to business.

‘I won’t bother to tell you what’s the matter with you,’ he said crisply, ‘because you’d only ask me to spell it and I can’t. You might call it traumatic massive neurasthenia if you were a country GP thirty years out of date. Someone of your age might well call it a nervous breakdown, which is how mentally inadequate people describe a syndrome of boring signs and symptoms exhibited by people who find that they have bitten off more than they can emotionally chew.’

I thought about that.

‘The answer to that,’ I said at last, ‘is in the plural again.’

He thought about that.

‘Now I come to think of it,’ he said judicially, ‘you could just be right. However, what matters is that I’ve had you under heavy sedation for a good long time and I think you’re now pretty well all right – at any rate, as all right as you were before, ha ha. You may find yourself crying a little from time to time but it’ll pass. I’m going to give you stimulants now – one of the methedrines – they’ll soon sort you out. In the meantime, just go on using the Kleenex, ha ha, and cry as much as you like.’

My lower lip trembled.

‘No, no!’ he shouted, ‘not now! Because here’ – and with this he flung open the door like an exhibitionist’s mackintosh – ‘here is your visitor!’

It was Jock who stood in the doorway.

I felt the blood draining out of my brain; I think I may have shrieked. I know I fainted. When consciousness came back there was still Jock in the doorway, although I clearly – all too clearly – remembered having kicked his head in, weeks before, as he lay in the grip of that quagmire.

He was grinning uncertainly, as though unsure of his welcome; his head was bandaged, there was a black patch over one of his eyes and new gaps in his few, strong, yellow teeth.

‘You all right, Mr Charlie?’ he asked.

‘Thanks Jock, yes.’ Then I turned to Dr Farbstein.

‘You disgusting bastard,’ I snarled, ‘you call yourself a doctor and spring things like this on your patients? What are you trying to do, kill me?’

He chuckled happily, making a noise like a cow defecating.

‘Psychotherapy,’ he said. ‘Shock, terror, rage. Probably done you a power of good.’

‘Hit him, Jock,’ I pleaded. ‘Hard.’ Jock’s face fell.

‘He’s all right, Mr Charlie. Honest. I been playing gin rummy with him every day. Won pounds.’

Farbstein slid out, doubtless on his way to spread a little more sunshine elsewhere. He was probably a very good doctor, if you like that kind of doctor. When I felt a little better I said ‘Look, Jock …’

‘Forget it Mr Charlie. You only done it because I asked you to. My mum would have done the same if she’d been there. Lucky you wasn’t wearing boots, reely.’

I was a bit startled: I mean, I suppose Jock must have had a mummy at some stage but I couldn’t quite visualize her, least of all in boots. I suddenly felt desperately tired and fell asleep.

When I awoke, Jock was perched decorously on the end of my bed, looking hungrily out of the window at what can only have been a giggle of passing nurses.

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘how on earth did they …’