The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(94)
‘Goodbye, Charlie dear,’ said Johanna. ‘Drive carefully.’
‘Good luck, Mortdecai,’ said the Commandant gruffly.
‘Yes,’ is what I said.
14 Mortdecai’s interest in bird-watching falters
What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Sea Dreams
I must say I do approve of seagulls. Most petty criminals nowadays are so bad at their jobs – don’t you agree? – while gulls are as dedicated as traffic-wardens and a great deal cheerier about their chosen vocation. They (the seagulls) gather in the grey light of dawn, shouting dirty jokes at each other and screaming with ribald laughter, waking up slug-a-beds like you and me, then when they have decided what to do that day, off they fly – and how good they are at flying, not an erg of energy wasted – scrounging, stealing, murdering and generally fulfilling their slots in the ecology. At lunchtime, when we are munching our first brandy-and-soda of the day, they congregate again in some spacious field, their bellies full for the nonce, and stand there in silence, sensibly digesting and loafing until it is time for another worm or two (in the case of the little Black-headed sort) or a tasty dead dog (in the case of the Greater Black-backed buggers). How wonderfully uplifting it is to watch them wheeling and swooping in the wake of a car-ferry, waiting for idiots to purchase British Rail sandwiches and throw them overboard after one disgustful bite! The very poetry of motion!
When all the world and I were young and people still knew their proper stations in life, seagulls were something that happened at sea, only occasionally calling in at the shore to defecate on your nice new sun-hat so that Nursey could give you a bad time. Nowadays you see them everywhere, raiding dustbins and queueing up outside fish-and-chip shops instead of swimming in their nice oil-slicks and eating up their nice, freshly polluted herring-guts.
The assorted seagulls who were grouped at the foot of the ANCIENT FORT were not exhibiting the poetry of motion, nor where they loafing, nor yelling like spoiled brats as seagulls should. Waiting is what they were doing. Waiting around a bundle of old rags. As I drew nearer they all rose into the air in a sulky fashion, except for a Greater Black-backed (Larus Marinus), big as a Michaelmas goose, who remained perched on the bundle of rags. Foraging for something. I broke into a run. The gull’s beak emerged from the raggedy man’s face, gulping something white and glistening from which scarlet ribbons hung. The bird gave me a murderous, yellow-rimmed glance from one of its eyeballs then flapped insolently away. I had nothing to throw at it.
When I had finished vomiting, I turned the raggedy man over onto his face and ran down the fell-side to the road. I should of course have searched him as ordered but, to tell the truth, I was filled with horror at the thought that he might still be alive. That may sound strange to you but you weren’t there, were you? I had, of course, left my car some miles away and had walked across the moors to the map-reference and the ANCIENT FORT and the raggedy man. I waved down a passing car and had great trouble persuading the television-sodden driver that he was not on ‘Candid Camera’ and that no, I really wasn’t Robert Morley, before he became grudgingly convinced that a man was actually dying or dead and that he must take me to the nearest telephone. From there I telephoned Blucher’s secretary and gave her all the nu’s that were fit to print.
‘Wait there,’ she ordered. Since I still had one and one-half sandwiches and an almost-full pocket flask I fell in with her wishes. Night, too, fell. One hundred years and one almost-full pocket-flask later a Cocteau-like motor-bicycle policeman came roaring out of the gloaming, followed in a few moments by a ‘bad-news wagon’ (that means a police-car, hypocrite lecteur) and an ambulance. I led them all up to the ANCIENT FORT breaking each of my legs several times en route. There were several brief altercations: when the Sergeant berated me for having turned the raggedy chap over onto his face ‘thus possibly destroying evidence’. I explained that certain feathered friends had been destroying evidence even more effectively. He did not believe me until they turned the chap over onto his back again, whereupon the dashing, fearless motor-bike copper was ill all over the Sergeant’s brand-new shoes, starting another altercation which, conjoined with the ambulance-men’s bitter discussion about overtime, fairly made the welkin ring. I found it all a bit sordid.
‘Trotskyist pig!’
‘They cost me nineteen pounds ninety-five only last week!’
‘Get no bloody home-life in this job, do we?’
‘Filthy Maoist revisionary!’
‘I should afford such shoes on my pay.’
‘Got the shop-steward in your pockets, haven’t you, eh?’
‘They’re supposed to have the rubbed-off wet-look and look at the buggers now!’
‘Well, at least I’m not in the bosses’ pockets, I can say that …’
‘Drop of turps will have ’em good as new in no time …’
‘No, it’s not the bosses’ pockets you’re in, comrade …’
‘You calling me a brown-nose, brother?’
I stole away, murmuring ‘Oh dear, oh dear’ and musing on dialectical materialism and the Majesty of the Law. I was quite right: I had indeed left almost half a sandwich in the telephone-box. It occurred to me to telephone Blucher again, hoping to get him in person this time. He was not in the least amused. Had I searched the man? Why not? Was the chap dead? What did I mean I wasn’t sure? Why wasn’t I there beside him, watching every move of every copper? I began to feel like Macbeth in Act II, Scene 2, where his wife says ‘Infirm of purpose; give me the daggers,’ when the door of the booth or kiosk was flung open and the Sergeant demanded to be told who it was that I was telephoning.