The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(69)

‘Oh yes, I think I can manage, Robin, but thanks for the offer.’

‘Then she must be the relict of Milton Q. Krampf, who died the other month in odd circumstances, hmh?’

‘I fancy that was his name – why?’

‘Nothing at all, dear boy, nothing at all. But do always remember that you have a home here, won’t you.’

‘Thank you, Robin,’ I said, gnashing mentally. How can a chap as nice as me have a brother like that?

Then he wanted us all to go up to the Hall for champagne and things but I put my foot down; I had taken enough stick for one day and I certainly was not going to bare my buttocks for more. Why, he might even have unlocked his wife from wherever he keeps her, like something from Jane Eyre. ‘Brrrr,’ I thought.

So we went to the pub across the road and ordered an Old-Fashioned (Johanna), a split of Roederer (Robin), a Bourbon on the rocks (Blucher), a glass of milk (me) and a half of bitter (the Vicar). The congregation behind us – retired chaps, unemployed chaps and a few idle window-cleaners and coffin-makers – murmured ‘rhubarb, rhubarb’ while the landlady told us that she hadn’t got any of that except the half of bitter. In the end we settled for brandy and soda all round except for the Vicar and the unemployed chaps. (Goodness, have you ever tasted cheap brandy? Don’t, don’t.) Robin insisted on paying, he loves to do things like that and he loves to count the change, it makes him happy.

Then I went to the lav and changed my clothes and gave the hireling garments to Blucher to return to the honest artisan in Kendal – I enjoyed making him do that. Soon afterwards we parted in a spaghetti-like tangle of insincere matiness – except for the Vicar, who was doing his Christian best to believe that we were all nice chaps – and went our separate ways.

My separate way was to be driven two-hundred-odd miles to London in what Johanna called ‘a cute little British auto’ – a Jensen Interceptor. She had no patience with the absurd British affectation of using the left-hand side of the road; I probably secreted more adrenalin in those four hours than Niki Lauda uses in a whole Grand Prix season.

White and quaking, I was decanted at Brown’s Hotel, London, W1, where Johanna firmly sent me to bed for a nap with a huge pottle of brandy and soda. It was, of course, good brandy this time. Sleep, Nature’s kindly nurse, ravelled up the sleeve of care until dinner-time, when I arose with my nerve-endings more or less adequately darned. We dined in the hotel, which spares me the trouble of saying how good the dinner was. The waiter, who to my certain knowledge has been there since 1938, murmured into my ear that he could recommend the mustard: a statement that has never failed to charm me. Indeed, those were the very words, spoken by that very waiter, which first opened my youthful eyes on the enchanted landscape of gastronomy, long, long ago. (Few men almost no women understand about mustard, you must have noticed that. They think that mustard-powder and water mixed five minutes before dinner makes a condiment; you and I know that this is merely a poultice for sore feet.)

Then we went to the River Room or the Saddle Room or whichever night-club it was that year; my heart was not really in it. I moodily ordered a plate of radishes to throw at passing dancers of my acquaintance but my aim was poor and I desisted after a professional wrestler offered to tear my leg off and beat me with the wet end. Johanna was in tearing high spirits and laughed merrily; she almost charmed away my sense of doom and inadequacy.

Back at the hotel, she showed no signs of fatigue; what she did show me was a nightdress which could have gone through the mail as a postcard if there had been enough space on it to accommodate a postage-stamp.

Only a few of the oysters seemed to be pulling their weight but I was pretty good the first time.

My mental clock is amazingly good: at 10.31 I opened a petulant eye and croaked a complaint to Jock. Where, where, was the life-giving cup of tea, the balm which, at 10.30 precisely, brings the Mortdecais of this world back to some kind of membership of the human race? ‘Jock!’ I croaked again, desperately. A throaty, girlish voice beside me murmured that Jock wasn’t around. I swivelled a bloodshot eyeball and focused it on my bride. She was wearing that absurd nightdress again – it seemed to have lost its shoulder-straps. She was sitting up, toying with The Times crossword; the garment in question only afforded modesty because her nipples were supporting it like a pair of chapel hat-pegs. I shut my eyes firmly.

‘Charlie darling?’

‘Grmblumblegroink,’ I said, unconvincingly.

‘Charlie dearest, can you think of a word of seven letters beginning with “m” and ending with a double “e” and meaning “an extra performance in the afternoon”?’

‘Matinée,’ I mumbled.

‘But doesn’t “matin” mean morning, Charlie?’

‘Yes, well, the original meaning of matinée was “a way of amusing oneself in the morning”,’ I said learnedly. A moment later I could have bitten off my tongue.

Luckily, one intelligent, public-spirited oyster had been holding itself in reserve against just such a contingency.

It really is quite astonishing how sex affects the sexes. I mean, it usually leaves the chap tottering about and feeling like a disposable dish-rag in search of an incinerator, whereas the female half of the sketch tends to skip about uttering glad cries and exhibiting only those delightful smudges under the eyes which head-waiters would notice. Another by-product of the primal act in women is that they exhibit a frenetic desire to go shopping.