Amazing Disgrace (20 page)

‘You’re a member of
Neptune
?’ I asked him, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

‘Yah, you bet. Deep blue to the centre, that’s me. Cool. Me and the boys are giving our services free in a couple of gigs to raise awareness. Gotta do something about these oceans, man.’  

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Since I’d last seen him I’d managed to forget the strange mix-’n’-match
ideological
world he inhabited where Druidism segued into ufology which bled into New Ageism that incorporated deep ecology, any one of which might take precedence for a while depending on the guru he’d most recently met and the last psychoactive drug he’d taken. They have the attention spans of mosquitoes, these public figures, blown hither and yon by the winds of fashion, attracted as though by vagrant pheromones to alight briefly and suck up a draught of nourishing nonsense before pinging off for a different flavour elsewhere.  

‘So welcome to the club,’ Nanty was saying to me. ‘I didn’t know you’d written this book about Millie until yesterday. Obviously you’re one of us, Gerry. That’s cool.’  

‘Oh yes,’ chimed in Millie artlessly. ‘Gerry’s one of our greatest and most loyal admirers. Right from the beginning he was an enthusiastic convert. In fact, he insisted on adding a chapter to our book which is going to be of the greatest
importance
to Neptune because it explains my spiritual side. That’s the amazing thing about Gerry: his scope is so wide. He’s also a person who instinctively understands the sports personality. It’s extraordinary, seeing that he’s not at all sporty himself. I mean, you only have to look at him’ (and here she gave one of her famous laughs like smashed bottles pouring down a chute). ‘Yet his insight is uncanny. I don’t know how he does it.’  

And that’s how
she
does it. Any reader still wondering whether I haven’t gratuitously blackened Millie’s character out of sheer malevolence ought to note this unscrupulous farrago of lies, rudeness and moral suasion. Not to mention the liberal use of the royal ‘we’.  

‘I’m with you, Mills,’ Nanty joined in. ‘He’s just as good on musicians. Did you know we’re going to do a book together?
We got interrupted, though, when I got plugged in the arse. I’ve been meaning to get the project going again.’  

‘Not before he’s written
my
next book, though,’ said Millie firmly.

Lew caught my eye. ‘That’s your future fixed, mate,’ he said with an amusement I didn’t share. ‘Nobody says no to Millie.’  

High time somebody did, I thought in a considerable snit. The worst about being praised fulsomely is that it leaves no room for setting the record straight. To have attempted to deny any of her astonishing lies would only have made me sound insincerely modest. And to add injury to insult I had been aware for the last five minutes of a recurrence of my recent medical condition that was now obliging me to stand with one hand in my pocket with a great display of relaxed casualness. Glancing about me, to my horror I caught the
popeyes
of Barbra or Debra or Sandra fixed on me. This was dire.  

‘I was really shocked to hear about your accident, Nanty,’ I turned hurriedly back to him.  

‘That was no accident, that was a carefully planned heist. Did you know the cops have got ’em?’  

‘The robbers?’  

‘Nah, not them. My Van Goghs, I mean. The Italians have these crack squads of fine-art detectives, right? They’re hot shit, man. I don’t know how good they are on your
traditional
bloodstains but give ’em a whiff of a pinched Picasso or a missing Monet and they’re onto it like a shot.’  

‘Talking of shots and bloodstains, what about you? Are you okay again?’  

‘Almost,’ said Nanty. ‘I’ve still got to watch how I sit down. I’ve got five holes in my bum, you know,’ he proudly informed the pre-dinner crowd around him, one of those pieces of
information
that really helps whet the appetite. ‘Two entry, two exit, and one dual-purpose. That one I’ve always had,’ he added gratuitously.  

‘The bastards
shot
you?’ said Lew. ‘I hadn’t realized that. That’s a bummer.’

‘Sure was,’ said Nanty with a survivor’s casualness. ‘Cheek to cheek. Twice. I swelled up like a splitting pumpkin.’  

‘Dinner is served,’ announced an Aboriginal major-domo, turning as he spoke and raising a hand to draw attention to a piece of theatre. The wall behind us had divided and the two halves were silently withdrawing into the bulkheads to reveal a room hung with large works of Aboriginal art. Complicated snakes and salamanders full of spots predominated. I would have bet that the artists had been smoking something pretty potent as they drew, their brushes following tradition-
hallowed
patterns less songlines than bonglines. In the middle of this room was a gigantic round table, fully four metres across, much of it consisting of a Chinese-style lazy Susan. This black lacquered turntable was laden with quantities of odd-coloured food, not very much of which was instantly recognizable as edible. Beside each bone-white place setting on the periphery was a name, and with dismay I saw that an effort had been made to split up the sexes: a contrived and self-conscious
practice
if ever there was one, as though a dinner could double as a dating service. In this prandial lottery I had drawn on my left one of Millie’s grizzled admirers who smelt strongly of dogs and gaspers. Her name was Joan Nugent. She had an anchor tattooed on her right forearm and I assumed she had once seen service as a Wren or something similar. And on my right, with remorseless inevitability, was busty old Popeye herself, revealed by her place card as Debra Leather. As the
twenty-odd
diners found their allotted seats, no doubt with
impeccably
stifled inner groans of social dismay, Debra made my own predicament clear.  

‘Gorgeous suit,’ she said in the tone of an innocently icebreaking compliment, running her great eyes lingeringly over Blaise Prévert’s artistry.  

‘Thanks,’ I said gruffly as I endeavoured to slide
contortedly
into the chair beside hers. Suddenly I had good reason to regret my choice of clothes. Monsieur Prévert’s corduroy is of exquisite softness and generously cut. Beneath it, Mr and Mrs
ProWang’s joint handiwork was of exquisite hardness and by no means as tidily confined as it would have been by my trusty Stiff Lips jeans. Veal revealed, in fact. I pulled my chair
forward
concealingly until my midriff touched the table edge. White-clad arms insinuated themselves between the diners and left behind tall glasses of Foster’s lager. The dishes before us began to revolve slowly.  

‘Yer jist gotta grab it as it comes,’ came Lew’s hearty
admonition
to his guests. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony here. If you miss what you want it’s tough titty and yer’ll jist have to wait until it comes around again and hope it’s still there. It’s a bit messy but we’re all shipmates here. We don’t hold with
formality
aboard
Vvizz
, do we, old girl?’  

I noticed he had his left hand thrust informally up under her mozzetta, presumably drawing strength from the thrilling and mysterious join where living flesh met polycarbonate.  

‘You’ll have to be really careful not to splash that lovely
corduroy
, Gerry,’ Debra said. ‘I bet it shows every mark. Tuck your napkin into your shirt, I would, and sit well back. These
buffet-style
suppers are killers. What we all really need is a Big Diccky.’  

I nearly fainted. It took me a moment to realize she was merely referring quite harmlessly to a dickey, one of those false shirt-front things. But what malevolent fate could have put that dated phrase into her Neptune-cluttered head? As so often at critical social moments I sought refuge in food. When I had imagined myself coming aboard as Jack Lemmon’s Daphne I had not unreasonably been thinking in terms of a private dinner for three, given that I’d been summoned from London for the occasion. I had been looking forward to a down-and-dirty but amicable discussion leading to some sort of agreement between Millie, Lew and myself as to exactly what they were expecting me to write, and the point beyond which I would not go. But in the present company of popeyed groupies, smoke-cured Wrens, boy-band leaders and white-jacketed Aboriginals I felt inhibited to the point of speechlessness. Add to that a thumping woody which for all
its erotic potential might itself have been made of
polycarbonate
, and I was physically handicapped into the bargain. In the past Samper had occasionally found himself socially
disadvantaged
but seldom, I thought with a hot flush of rage, had he been so helpless a prisoner of circumstances. And all for what? Just so that he could write another damn-fool book? I stabbed moodily at a plate-load of rolled undergrowth in batter that was slowly drifting by.  

‘Don’t forget the sauce,’ the ever-solicitous Debra was
urging
in her Roedean tones, drawing my attention to various
silver
pots of hectically coloured jam. ‘Spring rolls are made to be dipped.’  

‘I’m in the market for something a good deal sturdier than bean sprouts,’ I said, casting hungrily about for suitable fare.

‘The tofu will soon be coming around. Tofu’s really good for you.’

I can be unequivocal about tofu. As far as I’m concerned, eating things you dislike because you’ve been told they’re good for you is about as silly as collecting things you’re not
interested
in because you’ve heard they’re a good investment. This is one of the many Laws of Samper.  

‘I never joke about food,’ I tell her. ‘What do you suppose that khaki sludge is?’  

‘Oh, that’s delicious, Gerry. It’s curried breadfruit from Bali. Lew always has it, it’s a favourite. Go on – take some of that saffron rice and a good dollop of breadfruit. Quick, before it goes. Hurry! Oh. Tee-hee. Bad luck.’  

It is not a dignified way to dine, frankly, this snatching
passing
dishes at random from a carousel like some fairground challenge. The scene of my present disaster, whose puddled lumps on the table resembled something found under a
lamppost
in Piccadilly Circus after a rugby international, was pounced on and mopped up by Aboriginals before the dish was replenished with more of the same.

‘Go for it, mate!’ urged Lew from far away across the table. ‘Get stuck in, she’ll be apples.’

But I was waiting for great trenchers of grilled snapper or heaps of glazed spare ribs, and it was increasingly evident that I was waiting in vain. It reminded me belatedly that I was dining in the high temple of Neptunism and it was unlikely that any living creatures would have been permitted to make the supreme sacrifice for our pleasure. Trembling alps of semolina drifted past, pursued by heaps of knobbly pulses and a clutch of what looked like exploded leeks. All fine in their subsistence-level way, but needing something pretty dramatic to lift them onto even a modest plane of gourmet pleasure. In default of fatted calves I was still
hoping
for squid or tuna steaks. Instead, a gigantic tuft of
deepfried
pubic hair swam into my ken.  

‘Oh, this you’ve really got to try, Gerry. It’s a marvellous seaweed. I think it’s a Fijian fucus.
They say,
they say
, it’s quite an effective aphrodisiac. Not that you’d need one, of course.’ And she actually giggled. Had she nudged me in the ribs I think I would have upended a passing tureen of strange puce broth over her blonde head and stalked out, woody or no woody, career or no career. There are limits. Not, apparently, for her though, for at that moment I felt the hand with which she wasn’t eating a Burmese bean pod begin to sidle across Blaise Prévert’s foothills, heading peakwards.
Inconceivable
. Nobody behaves like that outside the movies or the pulpiest fiction. I brought my thigh up smartly against the underside of the table and sensed the satisfying crunch of knuckles. She gave a little gasp and dropped her pod.  

‘Oh, I’m frightfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I’d no idea that was you. I was just trying to get comfortable.’  

‘Sorry, sorry, yes, and I was just trying to find my napkin. How embarrassing.’ She brought her crippled member into the light and inspected it tenderly.  

‘Maybe if you were to wrap something soothing around it? What are those things over there like bits of steamed
tarpaulin
? They’ve got a faintly therapeutic air about them, don’t you think? I’m sure they can’t be edible.’

But the lady was licked. Apparently she was not about to drape her hand in Laotian water hyacinth leaves or whatever they were. I began to feel very much better although still alarmed by my unyieldingly wooden state. Was it perhaps becoming ever so slightly painful? This was worrying because I had heard dreadful stories about priapism, such as that it could require urgent surgical intervention involving the
insertion
of large hollow needles for drainage. This is not
something
men like to think about. But at this point my tattooed neighbour Joan struck up in a confiding rasp.  

‘Something tells me you’re not one of nature’s vegetarians, Gerry.’  

‘I’m not,’ I said briefly. ‘Neither am I ashamed of it. Most people are omnivores. You’d have thought that at least the odd shrimp might have found its way onto the table, wouldn’t you? Perhaps even a hen lobster staring out wistfully from between her pink paws?’  

‘Keep your voice down.’ Her own was not unsympathetic. Her breath smelt of beer and nicotine, like the ancient mariner’s on shore leave. ‘Even at boardroom level Neptune has its ideological differences, you know.’  

‘It does?’ I asked with faint interest. Maybe there was an article in this after all, even if not an actual book.  

‘Oh yes. One of them is raging at the moment, this business of what constitutes an ethical diet. Your dedicated Deep Blue wouldn’t dream of eating seafood. The question is, what
constitutes
seafood?’

‘Surely not seaweed.’ I nodded towards the bowl of green pubic hair, now much diminished.