Read Online The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli - Free Book Online
Authors: Kyril Bonfiglioli
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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
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
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