For he ‘gins to guess the purpose of the garden,
With the sly mute thing beside, there, for a warden.
What’s the leopard-dog-thing, constant at his side,
A leer and lie in every eye of its obsequious hide?
You must have noticed from time to time, self-indulgent reader, that brandy, unless you positively stupefy yourself with it, tends to drive sleep away, rather than induce it. I am told, by those who have drunk it, that with cheap brandy the effect is even more marked. It is otherwise with Scotch whisky; a benign fluid. All credit, I say, to the man who first invented it, be his skin of whatever hue. Indeed, my only quarrel with him is that sixteen fluid ozs of his brainchild, taken orally per diem for ten years or so, lessens one’s zest for the primal act. I used to think that my flagging powers were the result of advancing age combining with the ennui natural to an experienced coureur, but Jock disabused me. He calls it ‘brewer’s droop’.
Be that as it may, I find that drinking a sound twelve-year-old Scotch in good quantity gives me six hours of flawless slumber, followed by a compulsion to get up in the morning and bustle about. Accordingly, I got up, without the sweet coercion of Bohea, and stamped downstairs, intending to roust Jock out and point out to him the benefits of early rising. To my mild chagrin he was already up and out of the flat, so I made my own breakfast: a bottle of Bass. I can heartily recommend it. I shall not pretend that I would not have liked a cup of tea, but the truth is that I am a little afraid of these new electric kettles: in my experience they eject their plugs savagely at you while you stand beside them waiting for them to boil.
There is only one thing to do early on a Sunday morning in London and that is to visit Club Row. I tiptoed downstairs so as not to disturb my Madame Defarge and made my way to the mews. All three cars were there but Jock’s huge motorbike, which generates enough power to light a small town, was absent. I gave a whimsical Gallic wink and shrug to a passing cat: Jock was probably in love again, I thought. When chaps like him are in rut they’ll travel miles, you know, escaping from prison first if needs be.
Club Row used to be just a row of shifty chaps selling stolen dogs: nowadays it is an enormous open-air mart. I roved about for an hour but the old magic didn’t work. I bought a disgusting plastic object to tease Jock with – it was called ‘Drat That Dog’ – and drove home, too distraught even to lose my way. I thought of dropping in at Farm Street to catch one of those rattling Jesuit sermons but felt that might be too dangerous in my present mood. The sweet logic and lucidity of high-powered Jesuits works on me like a siren-song and I have a dread that one day I shall be Saved – like a menopausal woman – how Mrs Spon would laugh! Do they really wash you in the blood of the lamb or is that only the Salvation Army?
Jock was at home, elaborately unsurprised at my early rising. We did not question each other. While he cooked my breakfast I slipped the ‘Drat That Dog’ into the canary’s cage.
Then I had a little zizz until Martland telephoned.
‘Look, Charlie,’ he quacked, ‘it just isn’t on. I can’t organize all that Diplomatic bit, the Foreign Office told me to go and piss up my kilt.’
I was in no mood to be trifled with by the Martlands of this world.
‘Very well,’ I rapped out crisply, ‘let us forget the whole thing.’ And I hung up. Then I changed my clothes and laid a course for the Café Royal and luncheon.
‘Jock,’ I said as I left, ‘Mr Martland will be telephoning again shortly to say that everything is all right after all. Tell him “all right,” would you. All right?’
‘All right, Mr Charlie.’
The Café Royal was full of people pretending they went there often. I liked my lunch but I forget what it was.
When I got back to the flat Jock told me that Martland had called in person, all the way from what he calls Canonbury, to wrangle with me, but that Jock had turned him away.
‘He bloody near spit on the mat’ was how Jock summed up his parting mood.
I went to bed and read a naughty book until I fell asleep, which was soon. You can’t get good naughty books any more, there aren’t the craftsmen nowadays, you see. Those Swedish ones with coloured photographs are the worst, don’t you think? Like illustrations to a handbook of gynaecology.
Mrs Spon woke me up, charging into my bedroom in a red, wet-look trouser suit; she looked like a washable Scarlet Woman. I hid under the bedclothes until she promised she was only here to play Gin Rummy. She plays a lovely game of Gin but has terrible luck, poor dear; I usually win six or seven pounds off her but then she’s had a fortune from me at interior decorating. (It is my invariable practice, when playing Gin Rummy, to leave one card accidentally in the box: it is amazing how much edge you can get from the knowledge that there is, for example, no nine of spades in the pack.)
After a while she complained of the cold as she always does – I will not have central heating, it ruins one’s antique furniture and dries up one’s tubes. So she got into bed beside me, as she always does (look, she must be sixty for God’s sake), and we played ‘gotcha’ for a while between hands. Then she rang for Jock who brought a naked sword to put between us and a lot of hot pastrami sandwiches on garlicky bread. We were drinking Valpolicella, hell on the bowels but delicious and so cheap. I won six or seven pounds from her; it was such a lovely evening; tears start to my eyes as I recall it. It is no use treasuring these moments as they occur, it spoils them; they are only for remembering.
When she had gone, after one last ‘gotcha’, Jock brought me my bedtime rations: whisky, milk, chicken sandwiches and aluminium hydroxide for the ulcer.
‘Jock,’ I said, after thanking him civilly, ‘we must do something about nasty Perce, Mr O’Flaherty’s little git.’
‘I already done it, Mr Charlie. ’Smorning, before you was up.’
‘Did you really, Jock? My word, you think of everything. Did you hurt him very much?’
‘Yes, Mr Charlie.’
‘Oh dear. Not.’
‘Nah. Nuffing that a good dentist couldn’t put right in a coupla munce. And, uh, I don’t reckon he’ll feel like doing any courting for a bit, either, see what I mean.’
‘Poor little chap,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Jock. ‘Goodnight, Mr Charlie.’
‘One other thing,’ I said crisply. ‘I am disturbed at the state of hygiene in the canary’s cage. Could you see that it’s cleaned out soon, please?’
‘I already done it, Mr Charlie. While you was out at lunch.’
‘Oh. Everything all right?’
‘Yeah. ’Course.’
‘Oh, well, thanks, Jock. Goodnight.’
I didn’t sleep very well that night.
If either Krampf or Gloag had departed from the agreed plan I could have borne it with fortitude, but two idiots in a team of three seemed excessive. I had told Hockbottle Gloag when he first approached me that I had no intention of helping him to blackmail his august Chum – introducing Hockers to Krampf was as far as I was prepared to go. Later, when Krampf had suggested to me that the photograph could be used, not for coarse money squeezing, but for facilitating the export, to him, of hot works of art, I had let him wring from me my slow consent, but only on condition that I should write the script, and play both the lead and the comic relief. But, as Schnozzle Durante never tired of saying, ‘Everybody wants to get in on the act.’ Gloag had already paid the price for this foot-light fever and it looked as though Krampf was at least getting a pro forma invoice.