Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel (7 page)

‘O’Hara…’

‘Here.’

Moon looked at him and regained his balance. He tried to
remember when he had last seen O’Hara, whether he had seen him at all. He had got from somewhere a mental image of O’Hara’s face – Irish, boozy and fat. Had he made it up? For the hundredth time in his short memory another trick had been played on him.

His irritation transferred itself to the remark, ‘What do you make of it, O’Hara?’

‘A schlemiel let me tell you.’

‘What?’

‘O’Hara, I ask myself, what does she vhant?’

‘Who?’

‘Running she was, did I see her? – no!’

Moon saw her lying in Pall Mall, humped, limbless, un-moving (
A lady does not move
). He knew why he felt relieved. If she had tried to crawl he would have carried her crawling through his mind until she had been replaced by fresher demons.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Moon said.

‘I ask myself. A loon maybe.’

That was possible, whom ever it applied to. Madness was the ultimate rationalisation of the private view. He tried to apply it to the day’s betrayals but they were too diverse.

‘It’s been a long day,’ Moon said.

‘Probably.’

O’Hara struck a match. It flared against the black moon of his face, tired tiger eyes slipped around on smoked-yellow glaze.

‘Thank you, I don’t smoke.’

The match went out. They stood together uncertainly in the cold near-dark.

The art of conversation has left me behind. I’m a reactionary. It’s been a long day. Probably.

‘What’s your name, O’Hara, your Christian name?’

‘Abendigo.’

‘You’re a convert?’

‘My whole life I am a convert.’

Moon felt trapped in a complex of shifts-words spoken, overtures made, acts performed – that were not getting him anywhere. The initiative had been taken away from him and he was being edged towards panic-he’d had the feeling before, in countless variations – it was like – yes, when he was a boy, in winter, in the games room, after football – his head and trunk were inside a thick knitted sweater that was too tight for him and he was trying to find his way out of it but he couldn’t find the arm-holes, and everywhere he pushed his fist the wool strained against it and his muscles got tired and he couldn’t find the neck-hole now and he would die in there if he didn’t make his own, destroy—

‘How long have you been a nigger, O’Hara?’

O’Hara grinned and cocked his head low like a great happy piano-player, and moved away.

Moon shouted, ‘You sly bastard-you didn’t tell me you were a nigger, did you? – you let me see your Irish drunkard’s face and didn’t tell me. How long has it been going on, O’Hara? Does Lord Malquist know you’re black-does he? Why have you gone black on me, O’Hara?’

O’Hara started to heave himself up the side of the coach.

Moon shouted recklessly, ‘And you’re not Jewish either!’

‘I told you already.’

Moon reeled away to surer ground – ‘Stick to your own kind, O’Hara, get back to the jungle and leave our women alone! I know you, I know what you’re up to! You keep chickens in the coalshed and urinate on the landings-you talk loudly on buses, don’t you O’Hara? Oh yes, I’ve got your number-you take over our jobs and spread VD through the schools and peddle drugs which you buy on your immoral earnings – oh yes, you don’t pass for white with me, you know – I’ve heard your slave songs, O’Hara, I’ve heard you all right and I’m not taken in I can tell you – Because I don’t think you’re so virile at all, it’s just a myth, O’Hara,
and if you want to know what I think, I think your sense of rhythm is bloody awful – so get out and stop persecuting me, you’ve only come here for the National Health!’

Moon crawled weeping into the leather-smell dark of the coach, and huddled on the floor.

I clutch at straws but what good’s a brick to a drowning man?

After a while he stopped crying. He found his notebook under him. He put it in his pocket and climbed down into the cold air. When he tried to speak his voice cracked. He wiped his sleeve over his eyes and peered up at the coachman blotted against the dirty grey wash of the sky.

‘I say,’ he repented. ‘O’Hara.’

‘Hello.’ O’Hara sat up on his box piping smoke.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean – you caught me off my guard.’

‘All right already.’

‘I haven’t quite sorted out my opinions on the race question, you see. If I’d had time to prepare my words I would have given the other side too. I can see both sides… I think I must be frightened of Negroes,’ he finished hopelessly.

Well, who wouldn’t be? They might revert, like Alsatians, and attack you.

On the other hand he felt like that about almost everyone. And horses. It was subtler than colour, it went deeper than that. Negroes and Alsatians were what he was mainly afraid of, but a horse could bite you and all horses, he knew, were more or less killing time till they could get a chance to bite him. And he was afraid of all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time.

‘I think what it is,’ said Moon carefully, ‘I’m not brave, you see, without being consistent in my cowardice. How could I be? How can one be consistent about anything, since all the absolutes discredit each other?’ He paused for encouragement and found it in the sudden bloom of smoke from O’Hara’s pipe. ‘I distrust attitudes,’ he went on, ‘because
they claim to have appropriated the whole truth and pose as absolutes. And I distrust the opposite attitude for the same reason. O’Hara…? You see, when someone disagrees with you on a moral point you assume that he is one step behind in his thinking, and he assumes that he has gone one step ahead. But I take both parts, O’Hara, leapfrogging myself along the great moral issues, refuting myself and rebutting the refutation towards a truth that must be a compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say. But I can’t ditch it, you see O’Hara. I can’t just align myself with whatever view has the approved moral tone to it. I’m not against black people really, I only recoil from the simplicity of taking up a virtuous position in support of them regardless of the issue. There is nothing so simple as virtue and I distrust simplicity. Anyway,’ he added lamely, ‘I firmly believe in the equality and proportionate decency of all mankind regardless of race or colour. But I wouldn’t want my sister to marry a black man. Or a Chinaman or an Algerian. Or an Australian or a Rhodesian or a Spaniard. Or a Mexican or a prison warder or a Communist, though quite often I think that there is much to be said for Communism … And to tell you the truth, I haven’t got anything against anybody. Except perhaps Irishmen. I hate Irishmen.’

‘I’m from Dublin myself,’ said O’Hara and broke into an old man’s cackle.

‘The thing about people is,’ said Moon, ‘that hardly anyone behaves naturally any more, they all behave the way they think they are supposed to be, as if they’d read about themselves or seen themselves at the pictures. The whole of life is like that now. It’s even impossible to think naturally because opinion has been set out for you to read back. Originality has been used up. And yet faith in one’s uniqueness dies hard.’

When he was at boarding school his best friend was called
Smith. Smith used to amuse himself, and Moon, by making indecent phone calls from public kiosks. One of his victims cunningly pretended interest in some obscene suggestion and asked for the caller’s name, and Smith blurted out, ‘My name is Brown.’ There was a nuance in that which Moon had tried to pin down for years.

‘I cannot commit myself to either side of a question,’ Moon said. ‘Because if you attach yourself to one or the other you disappear into it. And I can’t even side with the balance of morality because I don’t know whether morality is an instinct or just an imposition.’

Moon felt that he was within reach of a statement by which he could stand and to which he would return again and again. When he tried to overtake it the only thing that came into his head was a joke he had once heard about an actor.

He looked desperately at O’Hara who sat bundled up, closed off by his hat and cloak. There seemed no possibility of response. ‘There was this actor,’ Moon beseeched him. He pushed against the coach, rocking it. ‘An actor… I haven’t got myself placed yet, O’Hara,’ he cried. ‘I haven’t got myself taped, you see. So I’ve got no direction, no momentum, and everything reaches me at slightly the wrong angle.’ He shook the coach and the greys rippled. ‘O’Hara! You tell me-you’ve been black all along, haven’t you? I hadn’t seen your face before, is that it?’

‘Black schmack, vhat’s the difference?’

‘And why do you talk like that – it’s not authentic, it’s not real at all – why are you so unconvincing, O’Hara?’

‘A Dublin blackamoor should speak like a Yid?’

‘Lord Malquist said you were a Cockney.’

‘Pink you strike me,’ said O’Hara and shook with glee.

Moon pushed himself flat-handed away from the coach. The donkey moved quietly and looked at him. The street lights had paled from their blood-orange creation, and the
front of the house caught the shadows on its ledges and sills, regaining the detail that had been flattened into it by the dusk. The brass plate set into the stone came alive again, announcing—

BOSWELL INC.

Registered Office

Moon went back into the house and down the hall to the kitchen. He put the light on. The Risen Christ sat asleep with his head on the table. Moon shook him.

‘Listen, what colour was O’Hara-did you notice?’

The Risen Christ looked at Moon seeking recognition, then his eyes cleared.

‘Top o’ the morning to you, yer honour.’

‘The coachman – O’Hara.’

‘The nig-nog? What about him?’

Moon sat down at the table. The Risen Christ stretched and got up and went to the window.

‘Lovely prospect.’

Moon kept his eyes shut.

‘Best be off.’

He heard the tap running and the Risen Christ blowing water through his nose.

‘Food in the belly and a place to lay one’s head,’ said the Risen Christ. He promised, ‘I’ll see you’re all right when the time comes.’

Moon nodded blind.

‘I give my blessing then. I’ll just take this bitty loaf for my ass.’

Moon waited until the Risen Christ had gone and then, keeping his eyes shut, he felt his way to the back door, opened it and stepped out into the cold. Already reassured by the stink of rotting vegetables, he opened his eyes and found himself in the dark of the walled yard.

The kitchen window had been sealed flush against the bricks by a large rectangle of plyboard. A label showed white
against it and Moon by putting his face close could just make it out. It said,
Petfinch Court, the South Garden,
and
Panachrome Murals give you a New Outlook.

Moon was intensely grateful. Perhaps there was an explanation for everything. When he went back into the kitchen the Risen Christ stood there appalled.

‘It’s night,’ said the Risen Christ. ‘You could have knocked me heels over skull with a goose feather.’

Moon turned to the window and considered the view. It was not quite so effective now that the kitchen light was on but by squinting through his own reflection he finally got the perspective right. The distant hills bulked grey in their twilight.

One day all this will be yours, my son. There has always been a Moon at Petfinch and I know that you will carry on our name with honour. Ride hard and take your fences like a man. You will find Eton a new experience after Miss Blenkinshaw’s Academy but take your knocks as I did and play the game, play the game. And I want you to promise me, old fellow, that come what may you will take care of your mother.

The Risen Christ touched his arm.

‘Mr Boswell?’

‘Moon,’ said Moon. ‘Boswell is the company.’

‘Ah. And what business would it be that you’re in?’

‘Posterity,’ said Moon. ‘I’m in the posterity business.’

‘Posterity?’

‘Just a sideline. I’m a historian.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes it bloody well is right,’ said Moon curtly and walked passed the Risen Christ, who followed, and went back into the drawing-room, which was now empty.

There was a lamp on the writing desk. He turned it on and rolled back the desk-top, revealing untidy piles of paper neatly stacked, with one pile much bigger than the others
and not so neat. All the top sheets were irregularly filled with notes in small handwriting.

‘That’s a lot of stuff you’ve got there, yer honour.’

‘It’s for a book,’ Moon said. ‘It’s a book I’m writing.’

He picked up a loose sheet and read the four words on it:

THE GREEKS

The Greeks

Another sheet read:
History is the progress of Man in the World, and the beginning of history is the beginning of Man. Therefore

Moon crumpled up both sheets and threw them into the wastepaper basket. He rummaged about in a drawer until he found a small box almost full of white cards. He gave one to the Risen Christ and replaced the box and closed up the desk. The Risen Christ held the card close to his face and frowned at it.

BOSWELL INC.

If you wake up feeling witty, if

you are ready to impart your wisdom

to the world, don’t count on

word of mouth, don’t lose the credit.

Send for Our Man Boswell,

chronicler of the time, to dog

your footsteps, record your word.

Posterity assured. Copyright

respected. Publication arranged.

Two transcripts supplied.

‘I am nearly dead and no one knows

I was ever alive’
—Anon.

Ten guineas per day. Weekly terms.

‘What’s this then?’

‘What it says,’ said Moon. ‘What I’m offering is a kind of life after death. We’re in the same racket.’