The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(83)

‘Can I?’ she repeated meekly.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I’m pretty certain that I could.’

She trotted towards the bedroom. I am not a lustful man but there is something about the sight of a beautiful woman trotting upstairs before me, clad in that kind of night-attire, which arouses the beast in me, I know not why.

‘Charlie?’ she said, a few moments later, ‘Charlie?’

‘Mm-hmm?’ I panted, engrossed.

‘Charlie, are you pretending that I am Loretta?’

‘Certainly not,’ I lied. ‘I am thinking of my fag at school, if you want to know.’

‘You are vile and base,’ she murmured happily.

‘Charlie,’ she said the next morning.

‘Oink.’

Firmly extricating my face from between her breasts she repeated the name.

‘Yes yes,’ I said petulantly, ‘this is still I. Whom did you expect it to be? Onassis?’

‘Listen, Charlie – no, stop that – just for a moment anyway; I have to talk to you. Your date with Loretta last night was only your second assignment but you must admit you made a bit of a cock-up of it, didn’t you?’

‘Don’t admire your turn of phrase,’ I grumbled sleepily.

‘You know quite well what I mean. Now, if you are to be really useful to me – no, stop it, I didn’t mean that – you must be trained.’

‘Rubbish. I am trained. By experts. In the War.’

‘Yes, I know; I have your War Office dossier in the desk downstairs. It cost me two hundred pounds.’ (I awoke at this point.) ‘You scored very high in unarmed combat and sabotage and shooting people but that was twenty-five years ago, right? And you never took the subversion course, did you?’

‘Forget,’ I said, feigning a sleepiness which I no longer felt.

‘Well, you didn’t. They tried to get you into that scene just after the War and you gave them some flippant reply about flat feet and cowardice.’

‘The cowardice bit was true.’

‘Well, dear, you are booked in this very evening to start a course at our very own Training College.’

‘Oh no I’m not and anyway, what do you mean “our”? Who is this “we”?’

‘Yes you are, darling. And “we” is me and some girl-friends of mine; I’ll tell you all about it one day soon. You’ll love the College, Charlie.’

‘Oh no I shan’t, because I’m not bloody going.’

‘Lovely old house near Leighton Buzzard.’

‘I’m going back to sleep.’

‘Are you sure, darling? About going back to sleep?’ I did not, as it turned out, go back to sleep until some eight minutes later, after she had wrung from me my slow consent, to name but one.

Since I am incapable of telling falsehoods I must confess that, when I married Johanna, I had been keenly relishing the prospect of a great battle for power between her and Jock. Alas, Jock had fallen under Johanna’s spell and was by now a mere pawn, anticipating her lightest wish. Had I, in my bachelor days, requested breakfast at half-past noon, which was when it was requested that day, Jock would have summoned a cab and sent me off to the nearest Lyons Corner House. Today, his only comment as he brought on the corn-flakes, the kippers, the kidneys and the kedgeree was a genteel request about when Madam would require luncheon.

‘Why are you making those weird, growling noises, Charlie?’ asked Johanna. ‘You sound like the Big-Cat House in the Zoo!’

‘It is the smell of these kippers which makes you think of that zoological enclave,’ I said, hoping that Jock would hear me and suffer a little. In a little while, crammed with kedgeree and strong, sweet coffee, I felt emboldened to reopen the subject of the Training College for Young Ladies, making it clear that any assent wrung from me while under the influence of natural blondes was inadmissible under English law. In short, I was not going there.

‘Look,’ I explained in a reasonable voice, ‘all that rubbishy, reach-me-down judo and karate that they teach silly women at night-classes is junk. The women believe they are achieving results because, while they are striking absurd Kung-fu attitudes, waving their podgy hands about in absurder ways and making ultimately absurd noises with their mouths, the well-paid instructor is not about to step forward and deliver a round-house left into her belly while he delivers an old-fashioned right hand into her lipstick, is he? Although I bet he would often like to do so. But he is held back by the gentlemanly instincts which say that you do not strike ladies in vulnerable places, which is most places in ladies. I have never quite understood these prejudices myself because I am not a true-born Englishman, but they exist nonetheless.

‘Your common rapist or mugger,’ I went on, ‘has no such compunction. He does not wait politely while the lady waves her hands at him in minatory ways, nor is he daunted by any Oriental noises she may emit. He simply steps forward and gives the object of his desire a bunch of fives in the moosh – regardless of the valuable crockery implanted there by her dentist – and follows it up by a similar punch just below her cross-my-heart living-bra. This never fails. (Policewomen, of course, know a trick or two; this means that they stay conscious maybe thirty seconds longer and spend maybe thirty days longer in hospital.)