The Mortdecai Trilogy (28 page)

‘Well, you didn’t. They tried to get you into that scene just after the War and you gave them some flippant reply about flat feet and cowardice.’

‘The cowardice bit was true.’

‘Well, dear, you are booked in this very evening to start a course at our very own Training College.’

‘Oh no I’m not and anyway, what do you mean “our”? Who is this “we”?’

‘Yes you are, darling. And “we” is me and some girl-friends of mine; I’ll tell you all about it one day soon. You’ll love the College, Charlie.’

‘Oh no I shan’t, because I’m not bloody going.’

‘Lovely old house near Leighton Buzzard.’

‘I’m going back to sleep.’

‘Are you sure, darling? About going back to sleep?’ I did not, as it turned out, go back to sleep until some eight minutes later, after she had wrung from me my slow consent, to name but one.

Since I am incapable of telling falsehoods I must confess that, when I married Johanna, I had been keenly relishing the prospect of a great battle for power between her and Jock. Alas, Jock had fallen under Johanna’s spell and was by now a mere pawn, anticipating her lightest wish. Had I, in my bachelor days, requested breakfast at half-past noon, which was when it was requested that day, Jock would have summoned a cab and sent me off to the nearest Lyons Corner House. Today, his only comment as he brought on the corn-flakes, the kippers, the kidneys and the kedgeree was a genteel request about when Madam would require luncheon.

‘Why are you making those weird, growling noises, Charlie?’ asked Johanna. ‘You sound like the Big-Cat House in the Zoo!’

‘It is the smell of these kippers which makes you think of that zoological enclave,’ I said, hoping that Jock would hear me and suffer a little. In a little while, crammed with kedgeree and strong, sweet coffee, I felt emboldened to reopen the subject of the Training College for Young Ladies, making it clear that any assent wrung from me while under the influence of natural blondes was inadmissible under English law. In short, I was not going there.

‘Look,’ I explained in a reasonable voice, ‘all that rubbishy, reach-me-down judo and karate that they teach silly women at night-classes is junk. The women believe they are achieving results because, while they are striking absurd Kung-fu attitudes, waving their podgy hands about in absurder ways and making ultimately absurd noises with their mouths, the well-paid instructor is not about to step forward and deliver a round-house left into her belly while he delivers an old-fashioned right hand into her lipstick, is he? Although I bet he would often like to do so. But he is held back by the gentlemanly instincts which say that you do not strike ladies in
vulnerable places, which is most places in ladies. I have never quite understood these prejudices myself because I am not a true-born Englishman, but they exist nonetheless.

‘Your common rapist or mugger,’ I went on, ‘has no such compunction. He does not wait politely while the lady waves her hands at him in minatory ways, nor is he daunted by any Oriental noises she may emit. He simply steps forward and gives the object of his desire a bunch of fives in the moosh – regardless of the valuable crockery implanted there by her dentist – and follows it up by a similar punch just below her cross-my-heart living-bra. This never fails. (Policewomen, of course, know a trick or two; this means that they stay conscious maybe thirty seconds longer and spend maybe thirty days longer in hospital.)

‘My advice,’ I went on didactically, ‘to any woman assailed by rapist or mugger would be as follows. In the case of a rapist: instantly lie on your back, raise your heels in the air and cry, “Take me, take me, I
want
you.” This will disconcert almost all rapists, especially if the lady happens to be the kind of lady that only a rapist would look at twice. If he is so intent upon his purpose as not to be cowed by this simple ploy but persists in his purpose, why there is little harm done; lie quite still, try to enjoy it. The choice is a simple one: a brief and possibly not unpleasant invasion of one’s physical privacy – or a painful bashing causing the loss of one’s good looks and perhaps one’s life. Who, after all, misses a slice from a cut cake, eh? In any event, on no account endeavour to have the rapist apprehended, for his lawyer will certainly convince many of the jury that you led him on and the trial will be more painful than the ravishment itself.

‘In the case of a mugger, instantly hand him your purse – for you will scarcely be so stupid as to be carrying anything valuable in it – kick off your shoes and
run
. Run like the wind, screaming loudly. Scream like a steam-whistle; such chaps are most averse to noise when about their chosen trade. My life-long study of the art of warfare has taught me that running away is certainly the most cost-effective type of fighting. It doesn’t win many battles but it saves you a lot of troops. Ask any Italian general if you catch him out of his hair-net. Or, indeed, if you can catch him at all.’

Having delivered those few, well-chosen words I reached for a kipper in the manner of a lecturer about to take a sip of water.

‘Charlie,’ she said mildly, ‘our College isn’t really much like those night-classes in judo. You’ll find out when you get there.’

‘But my dear, haven’t I just made it clear that I am not going to your beastly College? Must I say it again?
I am not going to the College
.’

That evening, on my way to the College, I stopped at St Alban’s to drink a little beer and purchase a couple of flat half-bottles of Scotch, in case the College should prove to be teetotal. I also made a telephone call to Blucher – after that assassination fiasco, he had conceded it might be more ‘secure’ to give me a number and ‘procedure’ for getting in touch with him in emergencies. I dialled the memorized number, let it ring the prescribed twelve times, hung up, counted out thirty seconds then dialled again. A warm voice answered instantly, saying that it was the Home and Colonial Stores – a likely story, I must say.

‘Please may I speak to Daddy,’ I asked, gagging over the childish mumbo-jumbo, ‘Mummy’s very poorly.’

‘Oh dear, what a shame. Are you far away?’ I gave her the number of the call-box; hung up; lit a cigarette. A fat harridan loomed outside the kiosk, glaring at me and pointing at her wristwatch. I recked not of her. She rapped on the glass, displaying a fistful of coppers and mouthing at me. I leered at the money and commenced to unbutton my top-coat. She went away. The telephone rang.

‘Hullo,’ said Blucher’s voice, ‘this is Daddy. Who is this?’

‘Willy here,’ I said from between clenched teeth.

‘Why, hi, Willy. Are you at a secure telephone?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Look, I’m on my way to some kind of a Training College, it’s called Dingley Dell if you’ll believe that. It’s near … ’

‘I know where it’s near. Say, what’s that dingus you Britishers wear when you’re playing cricket?’

‘I don’t understand. We wear lots of things when we play cricket.’

‘I mean the thing you wear under your pants, to kind of protect your family jewels, you know?’

‘You mean a “box”, I suppose. But what the hell …?’ Had I not known him to be a humourless man I might have supposed him to be amused.

‘Is there a sports store there in St Alban’s?’

‘I could not say. But if there is one it will certainly be closed by this time of the evening.’

‘Gosh, that’s tough. Oh well, good luck, Willy. Keep in touch.’ He hung up. I drove off, musing furiously. My breast was seething with many an emotion but jollity was not among those present.

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
‘The Legend of Good Women’, long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below.

 

A Dream of Fair Women

 

Dingley Dell, for all its preposterous name, was indeed a stately pile so far as I could see in the dusk. As I navigated the stately drive an inordinate number of stately floodlights bathed both it and me in the radiance of some half a million Watts. A chunky girl in breeches met me at the foot of the steps.

‘Mr Mortdecai? Oh, super. Now I can let the dogs out as soon as you’re safely indoors. My name’s Fiona, by the way. Just leave your keys in the car, I’ll put it away.’

I carried my own bags up the steps to where a plumpish butler was silhouetted against the light.

‘Welcome to College, Mr Mortdecai,’ said the silhouette in what I took to be effeminate tones.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You have just time to bathe, sir. We do not change for dinner. Allow me to take your hat and coat.’ He took them, also my
umbrella. As I advanced gratefully to the great log-fire blazing in the fireplace of the ball I saw the butler leap at me, whirling my umbrella in the general direction of my lower jawbone. I ducked, of course, for ducking is one of my more polished skills, and took the umbrella away from him by roiling it over his thumb, then I dropped (but stay, let me explain: experts never
whack
at people with sticks, umbrellas and things, for the movement is a clumsy one, easily out-manoeuvred and incapable of doing any damage unless the stick be a right heavy one, which makes the manoeuvre even clumsier. No, the use of such a makeshift weapon is to lunge, stiff-armed, at the midriff: even if the ferrule does not pierce the skin it can be relied upon to smarten up the liver, spleen or diaphragm in an agonizing and often lethal way.) I dropped, as I was about to say, into a stiff-armed lunge at the midriff, calculated to do great harm to the sturdiest butler, but at the very latest split-second I perceived to my dismay that he, the butler, was in fact a she-butler and my point wavered, passing over her hip. She snatched it
en passant
and twitched it further, so that I staggered towards her in time to receive a raised knee. The knee was clumsily timed, I was able to take it harmlessly on my chest and, as I stumbled past, seized the ankle and threw her. Keeping my grip on the ankle I twirled it vigorously so that she rolled over and over and pitched up with a satisfying noise against the wainscot. Face down. I placed a foot in the small of her back.

‘Freeze,’ I snarled angrily, for I was angry. ‘Freeze or I’ll stamp on your kidneys until they pop like rotten tomatoes.’

‘Oh well
done
, Mortdecai, awf’lly well done!’ boomed a voice from the minstrel’s gallery. ‘Ethel, you may get up now – but extra combat-classes for you all this week, I’m afraid, dear. You made an awful nonsense of that attack, didn’t you?’

By now the owner of the voice was descending the great staircase; she was a massive creature, all beef down to the ankles, just like a Mullingar heifer. She advanced towards me, hand outstretched in a jovial way. I made to take the hand but hers slipped upwards and caught my thumb in an iron grip, bending it cruelly backwards. Well, I remembered how to deal with that, of course: you sit down, roll backwards and kick the offending hand away with the flat of both feet.

‘Capital, capital!’ she boomed. ‘Shan’t have much to teach
you
in the dirty-fighting class. Now, you see, we run a taut ship here and you must be on the
qui vive
at all times. For your own good, you know. But since this is your first night there’ll be no more surprises until after breakfast tomorrow. Honour bright.’ I relaxed. She smashed a great fist into the pit of my stomach and I subsided, whooping for breath, onto the carpet.

‘Subversion Lesson Number One,’ she said amiably, ‘don’t trust anyone. Ever. No, please, no lower-deck language; some of the girls are
prudes
.’ I stood up warily, planning a move. ‘No, Mr Mortdecai, you are not allowed to strike me, I am the Commandant. You call me Madam. Have you a gun?’

I pretended, snobbishly, to misunderstand. ‘A shot-gun?’ I said heavily, ‘No, I did not bring one. I was not told that you would be offering me any shooting.’

‘I mean, as you well know, a side-arm – a pistol if you prefer.’

‘No. I do not commonly come armed when invited to country houses.’ I spoke as stiffly as I could.

‘Then we must fit you up. What do you fancy? I always use this’ – and she plucked out a horrid old cannon – ‘but then I’m old-fashioned, you see.’ I sneered at the weapon.

‘Service Webley .38 on a .45 frame,’ I sneered. ‘Should be in a museum. Kicks like – like a female butler.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said placidly. ‘But it suits me.’ She absently loosed off a round which whirred past my ear and caused a log in the fireplace to leap pyrotechnically. My ears sang with the roar and adrenalin squirted from my every pore. ‘What weapon would you prefer, Mr Mortdecai?’ I pulled myself together.

‘Smith & Wesson,’ I said, ‘.38 Special Airweight.’

She nodded approvingly, strode to the house-telephone.

‘Armourer? Ah, Nancy; one Airweight, one box of graphite cartridges, one of solid, four spare clips, cleaning kit and a Thurston pocket holster.’

‘
Shoulder
-holster, please,’ I said defiantly, for my figure does not lend itself to the trousering of pistols.

‘No, Mortdecai, you’ll be wearing combat clothes, no time to unzip your blouse, you know.’ A chubby little matron bustled up with two cardboard boxes. The pistol was still in its original grease. I handed it back in a lordly way.

‘Pray clean it,’ I said lordlily, ‘and while you’re about it, file off that silly foresight.’

‘We look after our own pieces here,’ she snapped. ‘And you can have the foresight off in the morning when you report to the armoury. That’s
if
I decide you don’t need it.’

‘Clean it now, Mortdecai,’ said the Commandant, ‘and load it with the graphite rounds. They pulverize on contact, you know, quite harmless unless you get one in the eye. You’ll just have time before dinner.’

The butler, Ethel, showed me to my room and, as I lowered my suitcase to the ground, planted a succulent kiss on the top of my head, just where the hair is thinning a bit. I stared at her. She stuck out her tongue. ‘You didn’t hurt me a bit,’ she pouted.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said ambiguously.

The room was Spartan: an iron cot, hard mattress, no sheets, no heating, two rough blankets, a deal table and a kitchen chair. I have been in cosier prison cells. I broke out one of my half-bottles and sucked at it vigorously while I cleaned the pistol. Soon both it and I were ‘clean, bright and slightly oiled’ as we used to say in the Army. I loaded a clip with the graphite rounds but thoughtfully introduced, first of all, one solid cartridge into the bottom of the clip. Emerging from the shower I heard a rasping boom from some hidden loud-speaker: ‘Mortdecai – moving target outside your window – SHOOT!’ Shrugging a shoulder, I scooped up the Airweight from under my pillow, flung back the curtains, flung back the casement window, all in jig-time. I could just see a shadowy man-size target trundling jerkily across the lawn. Flipping off the safety-catch I squeezed the trigger. There was a resounding click.

‘Lesson Two, Mortdecai,’ said the loudspeaker, ‘always keep your pistol loaded and within reach.’

‘It
was
bloody loaded,’ I snarled.

‘I know. I took the clip out while you were under the shower. Careless, very.’

‘How the hell am I supposed to shower with a pistol about me?’ I yelled.

‘Sponge-bag,’ said the loudspeaker succinctly.

When the dinner-gong roared I strolled warily downstairs, happy in the awareness of my pistol-heavy trousers pocket. There’s nothing like a nice new pistol to dispel a feeling of castration. Not a soul struck at me. Taking a line from the grimness of my quarters, I had been dreading dinner but I was agreeably surprised. Hare soup, a casserole of pheasant with apples
à la Normande
, a soufflé and one of those savouries that women make, all washed down with a couple of decilitres of something which tasted quite like Burgundy.

‘Excellent,’ I said at length, ‘quite delicious,’ and beamed amiably down the huge refectory-table. There were two or three silent men present but most of the staff and students were women, some six or eight of whom were undeniably nubile. Following my gaze, the Commandant said off-handedly, ‘Would you care for a girl to keep you warm tonight?’ I gulped, which is not a thing one should do when drinking brandy, it makes it go down the wrong way. Much of mine went down my shirt-front. ‘I daresay,’ she went on absently, ‘that one or two of them will be feeling randy – it’s all that violence on television, you know. No? Well, perhaps you’re wise. Need all your strength tomorrow.’

I turned my attention frantically upon the middle-aged woman on my right. She proved to be one of those astrology-bores that you meet everywhere nowadays and promptly asked me under which Sign I had been born.

Haven’t the least idea,’ I said, pishing and rushing freely.

‘Oh, but you
must
know! What is your birth-date?’ It seemed only civil to tell her, especially since she did not ask the
year
, but I took the opportunity to deliver my set-piece lecture about the stultifying folly of those who believe, in the third quarter of the Twentieth Century, that being born at one particular time and place will govern the whole of one’s character and future. ‘Why,’ I perorated, ‘this would mean that every triplet would be run over by a ’bus at the same time as his two siblings! Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote a sentence which has been the guiding-star of my life: “Children dear, never believe anything which insults your intelligence.” Reading that at an impressionable age has, I am confident, formed my nature much more positively than the moment, some er,
chrm
, forty years ago when a fashionable
accoucheur
glanced at an unreliable time-piece and, realizing that he had another appointment, decided to spare my mother any
further vexation by calling for the high forceps. Surely you can see that?’

She, the astrology-bore, was wearing that rapt, attentive look which women use when wishing to flatter pompous idiots. Being an experienced pompous idiot, I know that this look means that the woman is not listening at all but is merely waiting for you to stop making noises with your mouth so that she can do a spot of uttering herself.

(As it happens, and if you must know, I was born on the last day of September, because my father begat me on the Christmas night of a year which I do not propose to divulge; I know this to be true because my father told me so in front of my mother and several of her friends – he was like that. When he saw my face fall he quite misconstrued my feelings and explained apologetically that he had been drunk at the time. My mother did not speak to him for weeks afterwards but few people noticed this because, by then, she was not speaking to him much at all, anyway. She was a woman of great beauty and dignity, although unpleasing in almost every other way you could imagine and a good few which you could not.)

When I had drawn to a close and had vouchsafed my birth-date the astrology lady seemed thrilled. ‘You’re a Libra, then, how wonderful! Guess what my sign is. Oh, do!’ I ransacked my mind for zodiacal signs. ‘Virgo?’ I said.

‘
Silly
,’ she said, lightly slapping my wrist. ‘I’m a ram – Aries. We rams are made
for
Libras.’ Well, I couldn’t correct her Latin, could I, so I just eyed her guardedly. Her face would have passed for an old but once expensive handbag and the crocodile-hide of her neck and bosom would have attracted a snappy bid from Gucci’s luggage-factory. ‘Not Wanted On Voyage’ was the phrase which sprang to mind.

‘Oh, come, come,’ I said diffidently.

‘No, no – I must go, mustn’t I, Commandant? Goodnight, dear Libra. My name is Kitty, by the way … if you care to know.’ With that she left the table, smiling at me. People with teeth like hers should not smile. For a sickening moment I feared that she might be off to my bedroom, to await me there like a sacrificial ram.

‘Do please stop grinding your teeth, Mr Mortdecai,’ said the Commandant as soon as Kitty was out of earshot. ‘She is really a
most capable person except for the astrology nonsense.’ I could not quite stop grinding the teeth.

‘If only,’ I grated, ‘if
only
such capable people would spare a moment to apply a dab of logic onto what they call their thinking; if only …’

‘If only,’ mocked the Commandant. ‘If only! Paah! That is a phrase for kiddies to say to their teddy-bears. If only your uncle had wheels he’d be a tea-trolley. Come to that, if only your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle.’ I glowered at her, for this was, after all, not the Australian Embassy.

‘
My
aunts,’ I said in a rebuking sort of voice, ‘all possess balls. Indeed, I can call to mind few aunts who do not sport a cluster of such things. I cannot claim ever to have
rummaged
an aunt but I’m prepared to offer any amount of seven-to-three that …’

‘Enough!’ said the Commandant, raising a commanding hand. ‘No wagers are permitted here, pray remember that you are not in a WRNS mess.’ I would not have minded offering five-to-two against that proposition also, but took the coward’s way out and said that I was awfully sorry. Then I said that I was awfully tired, too, and asked permission to leave the festive board. (The stopper, I noticed, was firmly in the neck of the brandy-decanter.)

I pined to clock up a few sleeping-hours but it seemed that I must first collect my ‘lessons’ from the Commandant’s Office; these proved to be an arm-aching load of Xeroxed brochures about how to Kill/Maim/Cheat/Lie/Deceive/Subvert/Communicate/Bewilder/Terrorize/Persuade/Forge/Impersonate/Evade/Explode/Compromise and do all sorts of other horrid things to other people. A second stack was about how to recognize Aircraft/Weapons/Ships/ Missiles/CIA Agents/Narcotics and Counterfeit Currency while at the same time Living in Rough Country/Surviving at Sea/Confuting Interrogative Techniques and Mastering Five Simple Ways of Suicide (three of them almost painless).