The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(66)

The actual sequence of events was that I awoke, sat up and chewed fingernails, cigarettes and Scotch whisky – not necessarily in that order – for an hour or two. (I need scarcely tell you that Jock had smuggled me in a bottle of Messrs Haig and Haig’s best and brightest.)

Those secret agents and chaps that you read about in the storybooks would have had it all figured out to the last bloodstain in a moment, I don’t doubt, but I had not their resilience, nor their youth. Perhaps, too, I was not, in those days, quite as clever as I am now. After a while I said ‘bollox’ and ‘I dunno’ and ‘soddem’ – in that order, this time – and went back to sleep after all. I don’t really know why I troubled to wake up in the first place, for it was evident to the most casual eye that the old anti-Mortdecai conspiracy still had its hand on the wheel, its finger on the pulse and its thumb up to the knuckle-joint. ‘Soddem’ was without doubt the best phrase I had coined that day. I said it again. It seemed to help.

‘I gotta get me bottle back,’ mumbled Jock the next day, sitting on my bed and watching Nurse Quickly deal with my neglected toenails.

‘Oh, I’d not worry about that, Jock. They’re sending us off on a convalescent holiday to the Lake District tomorrow – a couple of lungfuls of mountain air and you’ll be as full of fight as a lion. It’s all these nurses that have been sapping your strength.’ He shifted uneasily.

‘I don’t reckon you quite got the idea about “bottle”, Mr Charlie. It isn’t just guts, it’s more like sort of relishing using your guts. You know, like sort of having a bit of a laugh when you’re duffing someone up.’

‘I think I see,’ I said, shuddering thoughtfully and strumming one of Nurse Quickly’s gorgeous breasts with a newly trimmed great toe. Without a flicker of expression she drove half an inch of scissor-point into my other foot. I didn’t scream; I have a bit of bottle myself, you know.

A moment later, when she had completed my pedicure, Jock took the scissors gently from her and with one hand crumpled them up. Then he held out his spade-like hand, cupped. Nurse Quickly leaned forward until the breast previously referred to rested in his hand. He growled quietly; she made a sort of throaty noise as he started to squeeze. Disgusted, I dragged my foot with some difficulty out from between them and sulkily turned my back.

They left the room together, without a word, headed for the linen-cupboard if I know anything about hospitals.

‘Youth, flaming youth,’ I thought bitterly.





5 Mortdecai decides that there are plenty of fates nicer than death





‘Tirra lirra’ by the river

Sang Sir Lancelot.





The Lady of Shalott





Well, there we were, Blucher and Jock and me, sitting around a table on the terrace of an hotel under one of those Lake District mountains that people send you postcards of, sipping tea (!) and watching a party of idiots getting ready to walk up the mountain. It was a fine day for early November in Lakeland – in fact it was a fine day for anywhere in England, any time – but it was only about five hours before dusk and the climb they were planning takes a smart three hours each way. A Mountain Rescue Warden was pleading with them, almost tearfully, but they just looked at him with amused contempt, the way a female learner-driver looks at her instructor. (She knows that hand-signals are a lot of nonsense invented by men to baffle women; why, her mother has been driving for years and has never used a hand-signal and she’s never been hurt. A few other people, yes, perhaps, but not her.)

The mountain-rescue chap finally raised both hands and dropped them in a gesture of finality. He turned away from the group and walked towards us, grinding his teeth audibly. Then he stopped, whirled around and counted them ostentatiously. That would have frightened me. They just giggled. As he walked towards us I made a sympathetic grimace and he paused at our table.

‘Look at the buggers,’ he grated. ‘Wearing sandals! Just a lot of nasty accidents looking for somewhere to happen. Coom nine o’clock, me my mates’ll be scouring t’bloody mountain for the twist in t’dark, brecking wor necks. And I’ll miss t’Midnight Movie, like as not.’

‘Too bad,’ I said, keeping my face straight.

‘Why do you do it?’ Blucher asked him.

‘For foon,’ he growled, and stalked away.

‘Going to overhaul his equipment,’ said Blucher wisely.

‘Or beat his wife,’ I said.

We went on sipping tea; that is to say, Blucher and I sipped while Jock sort of hoovered his up with a lovely, wristy motion of the upper lip. I don’t much care about tea-drinking in the afternoon; in the morning the stuff Jock brings to me in bed is like that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena, but in the p.m. it always makes me think of Ganges mud in which crocodiles have been coupling.

‘Well, now,’ Blucher.

I put on my intelligent, receptive face, the one I wear when a heavy customer, pen poised over cheque-book, starts to tell me about his philosophy of art-collecting.

‘Mr Mortdecai, why do you suppose I and my superiors have uh preserved you from uh death at very very trouble and expense?’

‘You told me: you want me to marry Johanna Krampf. I cannot begin to understand why. By the way, what did you do with Martland’s er cadaver or mortal coil?’