Cocktail Time

  His guest was late, and to while away the time of waiting he went to the centre table and picked up a paper. One glance at its front page, and he had dropped it as if it had bitten him and was tottering to the nearest chair. It was not often that he indulged in alcoholic stimulant before lunch, but he felt compelled now to order a double dry martini. What he had seen on that front page had made him feel quite faint.

  He had just finished it when Lord Ickenham was shown in, all apologies.

  'My dear old Beefy, you must be feeling like Mariana at the moated grange. Sorry I'm so late. I started walking here in plenty of time, but I met Barbara in Bond Street'

  'Who?'

  'Barbara Crowe.'

  'Oh?'

  'We got talking. She asked after you.'

  'Oh?'

  'Affectionately, I thought.'

  'Oh?'

  Lord Ickenham regarded him disapprovingly.

  'It's no good saying "Oh?" in that tone of voice, Beefy, as if you didn't care a damn. You know perfectly well that one word of encouragement from her, and you would be at her side, rolling over on your back with all your paws in the air.'

  'Well, really, Frederick!'

  'You think I am showing a little too much interest in your private affairs?'

  'If you like to put it that way.'

  'I'm fond of you, Beefy, stuffed shirt though you have become after a promising youth and young manhood. I wish you well, and want to see you happy.'

  'Very good of you. Cocktail?'

  'If you'll join me.'

  'I have had one.'

  'Have another.'

  'I think I will. Phoebe upset me this morning. Her son Cosmo appears to have been getting into trouble again. You know him?'

  'Just sufficiently well to duck down a side street when I see him coming.'

  'He is trying to borrow two hundred pounds.'

  'You don't say? Big operator, eh? Will he get it?'

  'Not from me.'

  'Is Phoebe distressed?'

  'Very.'

  'And I suppose you yelled at her. That's your great defect, Beefy. You bark and boom and bellow at people. Not at me, for my austere dignity restrains you, but at the world in general. Used you to bellow at Barbara?'

  'Shall we change—'

  'I'll bet you did, and it was that that made her break off the engagement. But from the way she was speaking of you just now, I got the impression that your stock was still high with her and you've only to stop avoiding her and never seeing her to start things going again. For heaven's sake, what's a broken engagement? Jane broke ours six times. Why don't you look her up and take her out to lunch and make a fuss of her. Show yourself in a good light. Dance before her. Ask her riddles.'

  'If you don't mind, Frederick, I really would prefer to change the subject.'

  'Do simple conjuring tricks. Sing love songs accompanied on the guitar. And, just to show her you're not such a fool as you look, tell her that you are the author of the best-selling novel, Cocktail Time. That'll impress her.'

  It is very rarely that the smoking-room of a club in the West End of London suddenly springs into spasmodic life, with its walls, its windows, its chairs, its tables, its members and its waiters pirouetting to and fro as if Arthur Murray had taught them dancing in a hurry, but that was what the smoking-room of the Demosthenes seemed to Sir Raymond Bastable to be doing now. It swayed and shimmied about him like something rehearsed for weeks by a choreographer, and it was through a sort of mist that he stared pallidly at his companion, his eyes wide, his lower jaw drooping, perspiration starting out on his forehead as if he were sitting in the hot room of a Turkish bath.

  'What... what do you mean?' he gulped.

  Lord Ickenham, usually so genial, betrayed a little impatience. His voice, as he spoke, was sharp.

  'Now come, Beefy. You aren't going to say you didn't? My dear fellow, to anyone who knows you as I do, it's obvious. At least three scenes in the thing are almost literal transcriptions of stories you've told me yourself. You've used the Brazil nut episode. And apart from the internal evidence we have the statement of Jane.'

  'Jane?'

  'She came to London one day on a shopping binge and thought it would be the half-sisterly thing to do to look you up and slap you on the back, so she called at your house. You were out, but Peasemarch let her in and parked her in the study. After nosing about awhile, she started, as women will, to tidy your desk, and shoved away at the back of one of the drawers was a brown paper parcel from the publishing house of Simms and Shorter, despatched by them to Richard Blunt at some address which has escaped my memory. She mentioned this to me on her return. So you may as well come clean, Beefy. Denial is useless. You are this Blunt of whom we hear so much, are you not?'

  A hollow groan escaped Sir Raymond.

  'Yes. I am.'

  'Well, I don't see what you're groaning about. With all this publicity you ought to make a packet, and if there's one thing in the world that's right up your street, it's money. You love the stuff.'

  'But, Frederick, suppose it comes out? You haven't told anyone?'

  'My dear fellow, why would I? I assumed from your having used a pseudonym that you wanted it kept dark.'

  'And Jane?'

  'Oh, Jane's forgotten all about it ages ago. It just happened to stick in my mind because I remembered saying something to you once about writing a novel. But what does it matter if it comes out?'

  'Good heavens, it would mean the end of any hope I have of a political career.'

  'Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot. I wouldn't mix with them for any money you could offer me.'

  'Those are not my views. I have set my heart on getting that nomination for Bottleton East, Frederick. And there isn't a chance that they will give it to me, if it's in all the papers that I wrote a book like Cocktail Time.'

  'Why should it be in all the papers?'

  'These reporters. They find things out.'

  'Oh? Yes, I see.'

  Lord Ickenham was silent for some moments. From the frown of concentration on his forehead he appeared to be exercising that ingenious brain of his.

  'Yes,' he said, 'they do find things out. I suppose that's what worried Bacon.'

  'Bacon?'

  And made him, according to the Baconians, get hold of Shakespeare and slip him a little something to say he had written the plays. After knocking off a couple of them, he got cold feet. "Come, come, Francis," he said to himself, "this won't do at all. Let it become known that you go in for this sort of thing, and they'll be looking around for another Chancellor of the Exchequer before you can say What-ho. You must find some needy young fellow who for a consideration will consent to take the rap." And he went out and fixed it up with Shakespeare.'

  Sir Raymond sat up with a convulsive jerk, spilling his glass. For the first time since breakfast that morning he seemed to see dimly, like the lights of a public-house shining through a London fog, a ray of hope.

  'Don't you know any needy young fellows, Beefy? Why, of course you do. One springs immediately to the mind. Your nephew Cosmo.'

  'Good God!'

  'You say he wants two hundred pounds. Give it him, and tell him he can stick to all the royalties on the book, and the thing's in the bag. You'll find him just as willing and eager to co-operate as Shakespeare was.'

  Sir Raymond breathed deeply. The ray of hope had become a blaze. Across the room he could see old Howard Saxby, the Demosthenes Club's leading gargoyle, talking – probably about bird-watching, a pursuit to which he was greatly addicted – to Sir Roderick Glossop, the brain specialist, who was usually ranked as the institution's Number Two gargoyle, and it seemed to him that he had never beheld anything so attractive as the spectacle they presented.

  'Frederick,' he said, 'you have solved everything. It's a wonderful idea. I don't know how to th
ank you... Yes?'

  A waiter had materialized at his side, one of the waiters who a short while before had been dancing the shimmy with the walls, the tables and the chairs.

  'A gentleman to see you, sir.'

  As far as was possible in his seated position, Sir Raymond himself did a modified form of the shimmy A reporter? Already?

  'Who is he?' he asked pallidly

  A Mr Cosmo Wisdom, sir.'

  'What!'

  'Beefy' said Lord Ickenham, raising his glass congratulatorially 'it's all over but the shouting. The hour has produced the man.'

  CHAPTER 5

  It was in uplifted mood and with buoyant step that Sir Raymond a few moments later entered the small smoking-room, which was where visitors at the Demosthenes were deposited. He found his nephew huddled in a chair, nervously sucking the knob of his umbrella, and once again experienced the quick twinge of resentment which always came to him when they met. A social blot who was so constantly having to have something done about him had, in his opinion, no right to be so beautifully dressed. Solomon in all his glory might have had a slight edge on Cosmo Wisdom, but it would have been a near thing. Sir Raymond also objected to his beady eyes and his little black moustache.

  'Good morning,' he said.

  'Oh – er – hullo,' said Cosmo, standing on one leg.

  'You wished to see me?'

  'Er – yes,' said Cosmo, standing on the other leg.

  'Well, here I am.'

  'Quite,' said Cosmo, shifting back to the first leg. He was only too well aware that there he was.

  It was as the result of a telephone conversation with his mother that the young man had ventured into the Demosthenes Club this morning. Phoebe, sobbingly regretting her inability to produce more than fifteen shillings and threepence of the two hundred pounds he required, had made a constructive suggestion. 'Why don't you ask your uncle, dear?' she had said, and Cosmo, though he would greatly have preferred to enter the cage of a sleeping tiger and stir it up with a short stick, had seen that this was the only way A tête-à-tête with Sir Raymond Bastable always made him feel as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy novice who had learned his job through a correspondence school, but when you are up against it for a sum like two hundred pounds it is necessary to sink personal prejudices and go to the man who has got two hundred pounds. Charm of manner, after all, is not everything.

  So now, having taken one more refreshing suck at the umbrella knob, he stiffened the sinews, summoned up the blood and said:

  'Er – uncle.'

  'Yes?'

  'Er – uncle, I don't want to bother you, but I wonder if you could... if you could manage... if you could see your way to letting me have

  'What?'

  'Eh?'

  Sir Raymond adopted the second of the two manners that got him so disliked by witnesses in court, the heavily sarcastic.

  'Let me refresh your memory, my dear Cosmo. After expressing a kindly fear that you might be bothering me – an idle fear, for you are not bothering me in the least – you went on to say "I wonder if you could... if you could manage... if you could see your way to letting me have..." and there you paused, apparently overcome with emotion. Naturally, my curiosity aroused, I ask "What?" meaning by the question, what is it you are hoping that I shall be able to see my way to letting you have? Can it be that your visit has something to do with the letter I found your mother bedewing with her tears this morning?'

  'Er – yes.'

  'She was somewhat incoherent, but I was able to gather from her that you need two hundred pounds.'

  Actually, Cosmo needed two hundred and fifty, but he could not bring himself to name the sum. And anyway, though his bookmaker, to whom he owed two hundred, must be paid immediately, his friend Gordon Carlisle, to whom he was in debt for the remainder, would surely be willing to wait for his money.

  'Er – yes. You see—'

  Sir Raymond was now enjoying himself thoroughly. He reached for his coat-tails as if they had been those of a silk gown and gave a sidelong glance at an invisible jury, indicating to them that they had better listen carefully to this, because it was going to be good.

  'With the deepest respect,' he said, 'you are in error. I do not see. I am at a loss. Boots and Brewer pay you a good salary, do they not?'

  'I wouldn't call it good.'

  Sir Raymond shot another glance at the jury.

  'You must pardon me, a rude unlettered man, if by inadvertence I have selected an adjective that fails to meet your critical approval. One is not a Flaubert. I have always considered your emolument – shall we say, adequate.'

  'But it isn't. I keep running short. If I don't get two hundred quid today, I don't know what I shall do. I'm half inclined to end it all.'

  'So your mother was telling me. An excellent idea, in my opinion, and one that you should consider seriously But she, I believe, does not see eye to eye with me on that point, so as I have a great fondness for her in spite of her habit of putting her head on one side and saying "What, dear?" I am prepared to save you from making the last supreme sacrifice.'

  Cosmo came up from the depths. It was always difficult to understand what his relative was talking about, but there had been something in that last remark that sounded promising.

  'You mean—?'

  'Two hundred pounds is a lot of money, but it is just possible that I might be able to manage it. What do you want it for?'

  'I owe it to a bookie, and he – er – he's making himself rather unpleasant.'

  'I can readily imagine it. Bookies are apt to get cross on occasion. Well, I think I can help you out.'

  'Oh, uncle!'

  'On certain conditions. Let us speak for a while of current literature. Have you read any good books lately, Cosmo? This novel Cocktail Time, for instance?'

  'The thing there was all that in the Express about this morning?'

  'Precisely.'

  'No, I haven't read it yet, but I'm going to. It sounds hot stuff. Nobody seems to know who wrote it.'

  'I wrote it.'

  This was so obviously a whimsical jest that Cosmo felt it only civil to smile. He did so, and was asked by his uncle not to grin like a half-witted ape.

  'I wrote it, I repeat. I assume that you can understand words of one syllable.'

  Cosmo gaped. His hand, as always in moments of surprise and bewilderment, flew to his upper lip.

  'That moustache of yours looks like a streak of ink,' said Sir Raymond malevolently. 'Stop fondling it and listen to me. I wrote Cocktail Time. Is your weak mind able to grasp that?'

  'Oh, rather. Oh, quite. But—'

  'But what?'

  'Er – why?'

  'Never mind why.'

  'Well, I'll be damned!'

  'And so shall I, if it ever comes out.'

  'Is it as bad as all that?'

  'It is not bad at all. It is frank and outspoken, but as a work of fiction it is excellent,' said Sir Raymond, pausing to wonder if it was worth while to quote the opinions of the Peebles Courier and the Basingstoke Journal. He decided that they would be wasted on his present audience. 'It is not, however, the sort of book which a man in my position is expected to write. If those reporters find out that I did write it, my political career will be ruined.'

  'It's a bit near the knuckle, you mean?'

  'Exactly.'

  Cosmo nodded intelligently. The thing was beginning to make sense to him.

  'I see.

  'I supposed you would. Now, the thought that immediately flashes into your mind, of course, is that you are in a position on parting from me to hurry off and sell this information to the gutter press for what it will fetch, and I have no doubt that you would leap to the task. But it would be a short-sighted policy. You can do better for yourself than that. Announce that you are the author of Cocktail Time—'

  'Eh?'

  'I want you to give it out that it was you who wrote the book.'

  'But I never wrote anything in my life.'


  'Yes, you did. You wrote Cocktail Time. I think I can make it clear even to an intelligence like yours that our interests in this matter are identical. We both benefit from what I have proposed. I regain my peace of mind, and you get your two hundred pounds.'

  'You'll really give it me?'

  'I will.'

  'Coo!'

  'And in addition you may convert to your own use such royalties as may accrue from the book.'

  'Coo!' said Cosmo again, and was urged by his uncle to make up his mind whether he was a man or a pigeon.

  'These,' said Sir Raymond, 'in light of the publicity it is receiving, should be considerable. My contract calls for ten per cent of the published price, and after all this fuss in the papers I should imagine that the thing might sell – well, let us be conservative – say ten thousand copies, which would work out – I am no mathematician, but I suppose it would work out at between six and seven hundred pounds.'

  Cosmo blinked as if something had struck him between the eyes.

  'Six and seven hundred?'

  'Probably more.'

  'And I get it?'

  'You get it.'

  'Coo!' said Cosmo, and this time the ejaculation passed without rebuke.

  'I gather,' said Sir Raymond, 'from your manner that you are willing to co-operate. Excellent. Everything can be quite simply arranged. I would suggest a letter to each of the papers which have commented on the affair, hotly contesting the bishop's views, which you consider uncalled for, intemperate and unjust, and revealing yourself as Richard Blunt. If you will come to the writing-room, I will draft out something that will meet the case.'