The 2084 Precept (54 page)

Not that I intended doing anything about it.
The attraction here was purely visual, sexually visual if you
insist. Time, as it is wont to do, would clarify the rest of it,
starting with when my neurons decided to ban Céline to the archives
and add Susi to the group of blinking red lights.

"I am so terribly pleased," she said, as I
headed off in the direction of Roger's office, "that you will be
continuing to work with us." Ah hah, so she knew about that. So
much the better. And she really did sound genuinely pleased about
it. Good news.

Roger came out from behind his desk to greet
me. Man, the way the poor bugger walks certainly portends an early
exit, I would put a bet on it, he is an autopsy on the hoof. He
picked up the phone and asked Geoff to come along, and then I gave
them their presents, each one a small engraved plaque on a wooden
surround, intended for the desktop. Roger's said:
If you come in
here with a problem, and don't suggest a solution, you are part of
the problem
. And Geoff's addressed one of the world's most
frequently heard statements:
You are 99% sure, are you? Right…so
you don't know
.

The gifts went down well and so did the
invoice when I handed it over; they had been expecting a larger
amount. But never overdo it is my motto, the psychological gains
are worth a fortune over the long-term. I told them that I would be
back in a month's time, probably for several days. Great, they
said, it's a flexible arrangement from now on. But a very fine
arrangement, I thought to myself, I will be getting a lot of credit
as Clark's reported profits go up and up and up. And I will be
earning money for doing next to nothing.

I humbly accepted praise for the idea of the
employee wage deal and everything else, we said our goodbyes, and I
headed out into the reception area. Susi was still at her desk. She
was an attractive woman, I said to myself again, no two ways about
it. Let me cement the potential blinking red light status a little
further. "Do you know what, Susanne?" I said, looking deep into
those big, bright eyes, "I am also very pleased that I shall be
continuing to work with you." And yes, she blushed again, and she
gave me another crooked ambiguous smile and it nearly killed me.
But it didn't.

The sun was shining, the clouds were
scudding and, as P.G. Wodehouse might have put it, the bees were no
doubt buzzing, although that would be over in the parks rather than
here in South Audley Street.

Jeremy's phone rang.

He told me that a largish asteroid would be
crashing into Jupiter on Monday. He gave me the time and he gave me
the coordinates. Those present at the last meeting should inform
the prime minister, who would no doubt have the U.K. and possibly
the U.S. scientific community informed, although they would be
unable to assist by confirming or denying the event. He also asked
me to kindly let him know as soon as the Wednesday meeting was
confirmed. And he wished me a pleasant weekend. A non-committal
mood again today, it seemed.

I called Delsey and repeated the
information. He said he would call me back as soon as he had an
answer on the Wednesday meeting.

I wandered around a few streets, I bought a
birthday card for Monika and I bought an IHT for myself. I read it
while having a sandwich at one of those small Italian cafés. There
were 34 car-bomb deaths yesterday, 112 other combat deaths, the
stock markets had gone down again, lucky me, and the long drawn-out
Euro crisis was continuing along its inevitable path to doom—a
situation which had not of course (as I keep repeating, but these
repetitions are delectable and comfortable to my neurons) been
created by any of the birdbrains in any of their ministries, and
which, consequently and naturally, had nothing to do with them at
all.

I walked back through Berkeley Square to the
hotel. Little Miss Ugly was at the desk. She had a nice name:
Geneviève Lane. I noticed it for the first time from the nametag
pinned to her chest. Breast, I should say, a more sensual word and
also a more accurate one. Nice breasts she had, as I mentioned
before, and ready-made for nestling on in times of trouble and
strife. These were the kind of breasts which help to heal the soul
of the emotionally wounded, no doubt about it. Emotionally wounded
men at least, I don't think that breasts arouse women, non-lesbian
women anyway. And as for the lesbians, let them enjoy it also, it
doesn't bother anybody. And as for the aberrations, the militant
females, the ones who are in fact non-female females if they did
but know it, I recommend a visit to a restaurant called simply
La Vie
, which is just off Knightsbridge and whose owner is a
cynic, just like me. His menu frequently contains comments such as
'
In the interests of equality, we are serving chest of chicken
tonight
'.

All of which, I admit, is neither here nor
there. Good evening, Miss Lane, I said, knowing full well that my
use of her name would have an effect on her, and indeed it did. It
was as if I had plied her with an array of selected aphrodisiacs,
she was metaphorically stripping her clothes off, I do not
exaggerate. Which made for a pleasant discourse with a strong
erotic undercurrent, while I explained that I was going to have a
snooze and that I would then be leaving. I would pay for tonight of
course, but would prefer to settle the bill now. Perhaps next time,
Miss Lane, I thought to myself, you can apply your breasts to the
furtherance of the O'Donoghue healing process.

I fell asleep straight away and Morpheus
provided me with a dream about breasts. Nice firm, round breasts,
the ones which last for decades, as opposed to the ones like poor
Miss Lane's, which were also nice but which would not last for
decades. Poor girl, hers were a fast depreciating asset, to use a
balance sheet term, and in the not too distant future you would not
be thinking of them as breasts anymore, your neurons would be
classifying them under the category of udders. Or dugs. I know,
it's brutal, it's sad. But that's life, it's the way things are. I
hope that Geneviève uses her assets well (or, more appropriately,
allows them to be well used) during the short time allotted to
them, and that she eventually marries a man whose libido is
destined to be equally short-lived.

I hold the view, right or wrong, that I have
no reason to apologize for acknowledging nature's idiosyncracies
for what they are. So I won't.

I didn't wake up until 11 p.m. No matter,
there were ferries to France throughout the night.

I trundled down to Dover at the mandatory
U.K. speed of a diseased tortoise, and bought a ticket for the next
available ship, which was a Sea France one (MyFerryLink, ghastly
name). It was 4 a.m. by the time we docked in Calais, which of
course was 5 a.m. continental time. Or Central European Time;
whatever, it excludes the Brits. And it also excludes the Northern
Irish come to that, excluded as they are in their turn, from being
Brits.

But European the Brits indeed are, albeit
unbeknown to most of the products of their modern schooling system.
Their country's name derives from the description 'Big Brittany', a
term used by the Romans in order to distinguish it from the region
of 'Small Brittany' in north-western France. And the name England
of course derives from the term Englaland, named after the Angles,
one of the German tribes which settled there during the
5
^th
and 6
^th
centuries. And so this Italian,
French and German salad, liberally sprinkled with Scandinavian
pepper and other dressings, is what the Brits are. Although not, of
course, what they have become.

I made it home to Okriftel in the original
land of the Angles in bright sunshine at around 10 o'clock. I
stopped off at the petrol station to buy a newspaper and Mr.
Brown's chocolate. From there I walked down to the local travel
agency. Renate was there. Renate Mayer, the owner. She can't have
been more than forty but nature had dealt her a bad hand and she
had clearly decided to cultivate the bad hand further by tending to
her lack of sex-appeal with the solemnity of a deranged gardener
watering his weeds. And her personality corresponded fully to the
abode in which it was located. I usually hold people who have made
their own way in life in high regard, and Frau Mayer was certainly
a self-made woman. And precisely that was in fact her problem. She
worshipped her creator. And it showed. Our relationship, therefore,
was of necessity one of the Frau Mayer and the Herr O'Donoghue
kind.

All of that being as it may, I utilized her
services because she was extremely efficient. She could deal with
the most complicated itineraries in a matter of minutes. She loved
nature—in spite of what it had done to her—and would locate the
most amazing hotels in magnificent surroundings in the French Alps
or the Swiss Alps or Madeira or wherever else I wanted to go with a
girlfriend who liked hiking (as well as the rest).

She had some very classy gift vouchers and I
told her I would like one made out for a return flight to Ajaccio
and two weeks in whichever fine Corsican hotel she cared to
recommend—in the name of Frau Müller. The dates and the bookings
would be confirmed at some point in the future but I would pay an
estimated amount in advance right now. If she wondered why I was
giving such a gift to Monika Müller, whom she knew, she didn't show
it. She never raised an eyebrow, a very professional lady our Frau
Mayer.

And Frau Müller it was whose doorbell I rang
before going up to my apartment. Being seriously squashed up
against those breasts again was as arousing as it usually was and
needed as much male self-control as it usually did. In fact more
than it usually did, it not being a healthy thing to have spent
several weeks in near-celibacy mode, irrespective of Catholic
priests' opinions, honest or otherwise, with regard to the subject.
Mr. Brown's violent welcome attack resolved the dilemma as it
always did, his slobbering dog-kisses easily annihilating my
neurons' attempts to maintain the erotic fire, and I accepted
Monika's offer of a coffee. I gave Mr. Brown half of his chocolate,
thanked her for keeping him until after the chess, and went
upstairs for a quick snooze.

My alarm woke me at a quarter past one—or a
quarter after one over the pond—and after a shave and a shower I
was off down the road to the technical college, only five minutes
away.

The parents were there, some of them anyway,
the mayor and a couple of his officials were there, the headmaster
of the college and three of his teachers were there and the chess
players and some of their pals were there. The sun was shining, the
mayor made his little speech, he presented me with a bottle of
Rheingau Riesling, and he wished me and all the players an
enjoyable and successful afternoon.

Which they wouldn't have, at least not the
latter. There were twenty pupils, nineteen young guys and one girl
and two teachers who also wanted to play. Now if these had been
good club players, there was no way I would have been able to avoid
losing a game or two. But they weren't, and so I was going to have
a fairly easy time. And how it works is this: I have the white
pieces on all of the boards, and I walk around making the first
move. And when I arrive back at the first board again, that player
then makes his move (they all have to wait until I get there each
time before making their move) and I reply to it and move on again
to the next board. This goes very fast initially, as I know the
openings—the best possible moves—and I don't have to think about
anything. And after about an hour, we are into the middle game and
on a few of the boards I begin to need a few seconds, occasionally
a minute, to make my move. But then the players who are in hopeless
positions start resigning, and the final game is usually over after
about three hours, maybe a little more. Except that on this
occasion there was a small, wiry, red-haired young fellow who was
playing very well, added to which I had missed the best move on a
couple of occasions, and after nearly four hours I offered him a
draw. Which it was, and which he accepted and which he had
deservedly earned.

After that, there were sausages, cakes and
drinks. The red-haired student enjoyed some well-earned friendly
mobbing by his fellow-students and I had a chat with the mayor and
some of the other adults, including the wives. And two of the
younger ones were really something, let me tell you. I had to
activate the neuron quarantine law to keep my eyes off their
breasts and legs and, yes, their asses (no, I have no intention of
being the first male in the world to announce the truth—the whole
truth and nothing but the truth—about why we inspect their
asses
)
. But the neuron quarantine law, as with a variety of
laws, is a difficult one to abide by and of course they noticed my
non-compliance.

But there you go, there they are, locked
into the consequences of the reproductive trade, thinking about
cooking dinner for four tonight, dealing with four people's dirty
washing tomorrow, cleaning the family nest on Monday, and all the
rest of what they call life. Playing their role in the planet's
cycle of birth and death, happy with their bourgeois lot—well, some
of them are and some of them aren't—but both kinds lost forever to
the single person's world of unfettered existence on life's ocean
waves, a memory they have swapped for a roof over their heads, the
use of a car, the need to comply with their biological requisites,
and the desire not to be alone and without offspring when Dr. Death
comes tapping on their door, as of course one day he will.

I smoked a cigarette as I walked back home
in the early evening sunshine, I collected Mr. Brown and the basics
for my fridge from Monika, and went upstairs. Mr. Brown settled
down to resume his pondering of intricate canine metaphysics and I
settled down to my newspaper.