Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks (19 page)

‘Stop that,' said the clerk, sharply. ‘You'll start the dog off.'

Smith was dragged, shrieking, to the lift.

‘Ah, Smith, Winston,' cried the white-coated man at the door of Room 101. ‘Won't you come in? Rats I believe, are what you, ha-ha-ha, fear most of all. Big brown rats. Big brown pink-eyed rats . . .'

‘NO,' screamed Smith, ‘NOT RATS, ANYTHING BUT RATS, NO, NO, NO.'

‘. . . Rats with long slithery tails, Smith, fat, hungry rats, rats with sharp little . . .'

‘Oh, do shut up, Esmond,' interrupted his assistant wearily. ‘You know we haven't got any rats. We haven't seen a rat since last December's delivery.'

‘No rats?' gasped Smith.

Esmond sighed, and shook his head. Then he suddenly brightened.

‘We've got mice though,' he cried. ‘Big fat, hungry, pink-eyed . . .'

‘I don't mind mice,' said Smith.

They looked at him.

‘You're not making our job any easier, you know,' muttered Esmond.

‘Try him on toads,' said Esmond's assistant. ‘Can't move in the stockroom for toads.'

‘That's it!' exclaimed Esmond. ‘Toads, Big, fat, slimy . . .'

‘I quite like toads,' said Smith.

There was a long pause.

‘Spiders?'

‘Lovely little things,' said Smith. ‘If it's any help, I can't stand moths.'

‘Moths,' cried Esmond. ‘Where do you think you are, bloody Harrod's? We can't get moths for love nor money.'

‘Comes in here, big as you please, asking for moths,' said Esmond's assistant.

Smith thought for a while.

‘I'm not all that keen on stoats,' he said at last.

‘At last,' said Esmond. ‘I thought we'd be here all night. Give him a stoat, Dennis.'

So they put Winston Smith in Room 101 with a stoat. It was an old stoat, and it just sat on the floor, wheezing, and as far as Smith was concerned, things could have been, all things considered, a lot worse.

23
Foreword to
Golfing For Cats
:
An Apology to the Bookseller

O
ne of the major headaches with which booksellers are invariably racked is the astonishing intractability of authors. The division between these twin curators of our literary heritage is over which of the two syllables of the word ‘bookshop' is the more important. How rarely can an author be found who considers, before even setting pen to paper, the marketability of his product! How often has an author rung a bookshop to say: ‘I'm thinking of doing a book, what's the best weight to go for?' or enquired as to the exact dimensions of the bookseller's most popular paper bag, so that something may be written to fit it?

Hopefully,
Golfing For Cats
will change all that. A new era of inter-literary co-operation, it is not too much to say, may well be dawning. For not only has this book been put together at the optimum size and weight, it also concerns the three most perennially popular subjects currently to be found on the bedside tables of the reading public, viz. golf, cats, and the Third Reich.

Unfortunately – but, then, one cannot have everything, all revolutions are by nature imperfect – it doesn't concern any of them very deeply. In fact, glancing through the material, I found nothing to do with golf, cats, or indeed the Third Reich. However, they are all there on the cover, which may well be enough: the majority of books sold are given as presents, and the givers, only too glad to have the rotten problem settled, rarely give more than a perfunctory glance at the dust-jacket. I cannot but believe that this book will find its way onto the bookshelves, not to say into the wastebins, of golfers, cat-lovers, and students of military history, in incalculable numbers. (These would be even larger had I managed to get ‘Book of Records' somewhere in the title, but this proved to be impossible:
The Golfing Cat's Book of Records
runs cumbrously off the tongue. Similarly, I have been told that even more books about fishing have been sold than books about golf, but
Fishing For Cats
, conjuring up as it did the vision of someone leaning over a bridge with a mouse on the end of a string, stretched, I felt, ambiguity to an intolerable limit.)

Why, then, I hear you ask, should I apologise to the bookseller, having bent over so far backwards, not to mention sideways, to please him? Well, it is simply that some confusion may arise, this book having been ordered in the vast numbers necessary to satisfy the giant trifurcated public for it, when it comes to putting it on the shelves: should it go under GOLF, or under CATS, or under THE THIRD REICH; or, indeed, under none of these? (There is, I quietly submit, a good commercial case for putting it under BOOKS OF RECORDS, but I shall not push it.)

I leave, I'm afraid, the decision to the bookseller himself. If he chooses to opt for the safest course, and buy three times as many copies as he would otherwise have done, I should prefer, in the interests of modesty and good taste, that the suggestion did not come from me.

24
Baby Talk, Keep Talking Baby Talk

Harvard's Social Psychiatry Laboratory has been analysing
the special language adults use when talking to children;
and it doesn't like it. Children, it believes, should be
spoken to as adults. And vice versa?

T
he Savoy Grill. An elderly diner has pushed his plate to
one side and is staring absently into the middle distance.
To him, a waiter.

‘You haven't eaten up your blanquette de veau, sir.'

‘I don't want it.'

‘Don't be a silly diner. It's delicious.'

‘It isn't.'

‘It is.'

‘
Isn't!'

‘
Is!
'

‘
ISN'T! ISN'T! ISN'T!'

‘I'm going to turn my back, sir, and I'm going to count up to ten, and when I turn round again I want to see all that nice blanquette de veau eaten up. ONE – TWO – THREE –'

‘I'm going to be sick.'

‘– FIVE – SIX –'

‘I'm going to stick my fingers down my throat and I'm going to be sick on my new dinner jacket and I'm going to be sick on my new shoes and I'm going to be sick on my new mistress and I'm going to be sick on the tablecloth, and I
DON'T CARE!'

‘Look, sir, shall I tell you what we're going to do? You see that great big boiled potato? Well, that's Mount Everest. And the brussels sprouts are going to climb right up it.'

‘Why?'

‘Because they're mountaineers.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's there.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it is, and because I say so. But when they get to the top, they're going to be eaten by a Yeti. And do you know who the Yeti is?'

‘No.'

‘You are, sir! You're a big brave Yeti, and you're going to eat all the mountaineers up!'

‘I'm
not
a Yeti, I'm not, I'm
not
! I want some pudding.'

‘Sorry, sir, no pudding until you've eaten your blanquette de veau all up.'

‘I'll scream!'

‘That's quite enough of that, sir. Do you want me to call the Head Waiter?'

‘No.'

‘You know what the Head Waiter does to naughty diners, don't you, sir?'

‘Yes.'

‘So you're going to eat up your nice blanquette de veau, aren't you?'

‘Can I have some pudding afterwards?'

‘If you're very, very good.'

‘All right.'

The Manager's office, Barcloyd's Bank. A knock on the door.

‘Yes? Ah – it's Hopcroft, isn't it?'

‘Hoskins, sir.'

‘Speak up, boy!'

‘
Hoskins
, sir!'

‘Have you got something in your mouth, Hoskins?'

‘It's a – no, sir – I mean, yes sir, it's my pipe, sir.'

‘And you think you can come in here smoking a pipe, do you, Hoskins? You think you can
afford
a pipe, do you?'

‘Well, sir, I—'

‘Don't lie to me, Hoskins, you snivelling little beast! And stop scratching yourself. What's that in your hand?'

‘It's my m-monthly statement, sir.'

‘Is it, Hoskins, is it indeed? And are you proud of your monthly statement, Hoskins?'

‘No, sir.'

‘No, sir. Well nor am I, sir. And I've asked you to come and see me, Hoskins, because I'm very disappointed in you. Very disappointed indeed!'

‘I'm sorry, sir.'

‘Stop whining, Hoskins! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a customer who whines. I had great hopes for you, Hoskins: I pride myself on being able to pick a promising customer, a customer who'll go far, a customer who will be a credit to Barcloyd's. A credit, Hoskins. Do you even know what the word means?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I doubt that, Hoskins. I doubt that very much. You will please conjugate the verb
to be in credit
.'

‘I am in credit, thou art in credit, he is in credit, we are in credit, you are in credit, they are in credit.'

‘And
are
you in credit, Hoskins?'

‘No, sir.'

‘I despair, Hoskins, I truly despair. Look at the other customers, look at Sibley, and Greene, and Maltravers, look at Finnegan – credit accounts, deposit accounts, special accounts, joint accounts, all in credit, all improving every day, all rising to the top, all customers I can be proud of. And look at your younger brother, Hoskins Minor: he's just become Hoskins & Gribble Ltd. He'll go far.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Now, Hoskins, your teller informs me that you want to buy a bicycle. Is this true?'

‘Well, sir, I thought—'

‘I know what you thought, Hoskins, you thought you'd sneak off at every opportunity and go gallivanting about on your wretched machine instead of working. Well, Hoskins, I am not having it, do you hear? Now, unfortunately, our rules only permit me certain penalties, and since you are already paying eleven per cent on your wretched scroungings – God, if the Founder had lived to see a Barcloyd's chap beg! – there is only one other course open to me. You will stay behind after work, Hoskins, and you will do one hour's overtime per day. Is that clear?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And think yourself lucky you live in so-called enlightened times, Hoskins. In my day, you'd have been hauled up in front of the whole bank and made bankrupt! Now get out!'

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

A Surbiton bedroom. Afternoon. The blinds are drawn. The door
bursts open.

‘ALICE! You're playing with that awful milkman again! What did I tell you would happen if I ever caught you with him after last time?'

‘You said you'd divorce me.'

‘And did I say I would never ever play with you again?'

‘Yes.'

‘I only come up 'ere about the one doz large brown eggs as per note, I never—'

‘You shut up! You just shut up! You're a nasty horrid person and we don't want you playing in our house! Alice is
my
friend!'

‘I wasn't doing nothing, I was only talking, I didn't touch nothing, I never—'

‘That's a double negative! You're a stupid uneducated little snot, and you live in a council estate, and you're not allowed to play with nice people! That was a double negative, Alice, did you hear it? That's what happens when you ask them in. You'll be picking up all sorts of things.'

‘He's not common, Reginald, he's not, he's NOT!'

‘He's still got his socks on, Alice. He's in bed with his socks on!'

‘So what?'

‘Har, har, har! Who's in bed with his socks on? Har, har, har! You wait till I tell your mother about this, Alice, you wait till I tell her about him with his socks on in bed!'

‘
Your
mother used to wear a wig! Reginald's mummy used to wear a ginger wig, Dennis!'

‘Wun't surprise me. Wun't surprise me at all. Wun't—'

‘You just shut up! Your feet smell.'

‘So do yours, with brass knobs on, and no returns.'

‘
And
you haven't folded your trousers! He hasn't folded his trousers, Alice, he's just thrown them down all anyhow, he's just thrown them on the floor! You've just thrown them on the floor, you horrible little bogie!'

‘Knickers!'

‘Horse stuff in the road!'

‘Wee-wee!'

‘There we are, Alice, he's swearing, he's saying filthy things, what did I tell you? Why are you playing with him?'

‘It's your fault, Reginald, you won't play with me anymore, you're always going out or too tired or something, and he's got all sorts of new games, it serves you right, so there!'

‘But he's not even a member of our
gang
, he's never played Conservatives in his life, he's got hairs in his nose, and—'