But Fitch collected himself and spoke quite evenly.
‘Lord Malquist?’
‘So I am given to believe, but you catch me at a credulous moment.’
‘Fitch, my lord.’
‘How do you do? My dear, may I present Mr Fitch. Mr Fitch-Mrs Moon. And Mr Christ and (where is he? oh, there you are, old chap) Mr Moon.’
Fitch straightened his tie and nodded cautiously.
Lord Malquist said, ‘Perhaps you would call round later on, Mr Fitch. I have had a debilitating night. Come on, my dear.’
‘Carry me, Falcon,’ said Jane huskily. ‘I want to be carried to your boudoir.’
Fitch found his tongue.
‘My lord! I have the gravest news – the situation is quite beyond reprieve. An injunction has been served and Sir Mortimer asks me to say that only liquidization of the property—’
The ninth earl went up two steps and addressed Fitch severely.
‘You may instruct Sir Mortimer that I let them have Petfinch but I’m damned if I can be expected to exist without a house in town.’
‘I’m sorry, my lord, but if you had cut your coat to suit your cloth—’
‘You are not my tailor, Fitch, thank God.’
‘I mean your conduct—’
‘My conduct has been one of modesty and self-denial. May I refer you to Sir George Verney who went about everywhere in a coach-and-six flanked by two six-foot Negroes blowing on silver horns.’
And the ninth earl moved Fitch aside with his stick and went into the house. Jane ran after him, followed more hesitantly by the Risen Christ.
Birdboot picked up his suitcase and with an air of finality walked off up the road.
Exit Butler.
Fitch came down the steps looking worried as ever.
‘Good day, my lord,’ he said to Moon, stepping over his legs.
‘Good-bye,’ Moon said. ‘Moon’s the name.’
Exit Messenger.
It started to rain again.
Moon put his face up gratefully, and saw O’Hara swaddled in his cloak, his black face screwed up around his pipe, a certain compassion in his tiger eyes.
‘Abendigo.’
Moon smiled. It occurred to him that O’Hara was one black man of whom he was not afraid. He had always pretended not to be afraid of black men in case they hit him for being afraid of them. But O’Hara was somehow olympian.
‘I was going to tell you a story,’ Moon remembered. ‘A joke. Yes, well there was this actor who met an old friend he hadn’t seen for years, in a pub, you see, and to celebrate they started to drink double whiskies, are you with me, O’Hara? Well, after about an hour of this, the actor asked his friend if he liked the theatre and his friend said he did, so the actor said, Shay, hic, there’s a fine play on jusht next door and I’d like to shee it meshelf – he was drunk you shee, see—’ Moon giggled and recovered. ‘So they bought two tickets for the gallery and after some delay the play began, and they sat watching it for a few minutes, and then the actor nudged his friend in the ribs and whispered, Keep yer eyes shkinned, hic, because I come on in a minute …’ He looked up. ‘I’m not very good at telling jokes. I think I’ll get up now.’
O’Hara bent down and held Moon under his arms, raised him up and leant him against the coach.
‘Thank you, O’Hara.’
O’Hara said, implausibly as ever, ‘Don’t be a schmuck, do yourself a favour, go home. In the coach let me take you.’
‘No, really, I’m all right. I’ve got a present for Laura.’
He pushed himself flat-handed away from the coach and stood swaying with his feet curiously rooted in the pavement.
‘ ’Ere, wot’s goin’ on ‘ere then, mate?’
Moon turned and saw that the roadsweeper and the newspaper seller had approached.
‘Oh hello,’ he said. ‘Your man’s inside.’
‘What man? – I’m just a poor bloke makin’ a few coppers wiv—’
‘What’s up, sarge?’ asked the spider man coming up to them.
‘ ’Ere, bugger off, will you ’Awkins, you’re on me pitch,’ said the newspaper seller to the spider man.
‘Oh, right mate, sorry.’
The man with the moustache looked on from some yards away.
‘Lord Malquist’s gone inside,’ Moon said. ‘The one with the clothes. So to speak.’
The roadsweeper said, ‘I think he’s on to us, sarge.’
The newspaper seller put his face close to Moon’s.
‘And what do you know about anything, may I ask?’
‘Haven’t you come to arrest Lord Malquist?’
‘What for?’
Moon frowned.
‘For knocking down that lady. Mrs Cuttle.’
‘I should say not,’ said the newspaper seller. ‘What an idea.’
‘What an idea,’ said the roadsweeper.
‘We’re here to guard his life,’ said the spider man.
‘That’s enough of that,’ said the newspaper seller.
‘Guard his life?’ said Moon. ‘What for?’
‘Because there’s been threats,’ said the newspaper seller. ‘That’s what for.’
‘An anarchist,’ said the roadsweeper.
‘Cuttle,’ said the spider man.
‘Oh, we know all about him,’ said the newspaper seller. ‘Keep your eyes skinned, men.’
‘Because I come on in a minute,’ said Moon. He couldn’t stop himself giggling. He giggled his way up the steps, failing, and picked himself up. The newspaper seller and the roadsweeper and the spider man watched him doubtfully. The man with the moustache had gone. O’Hara started to climb up the side of the coach.
Moon stumbled into the house leaving the door wide open. The Risen Christ was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. Moon fell down on the step beside him and the Risen Christ made room. He noticed that little pieces of paper with numbers were stuck on various objects around – the hat-stand, the hall table, a vase. There was even one stuck on an upturned corner of the rug. A long black cloak and a hat hung on the stand.
Moon smiled at the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ bobbed his head up and down glumly.
‘What’s the matter?’ Moon asked him.
‘It’s a fine picklin’ I’m in, begorrah. I can’t be after getting about now without my ass, I mean I’m immobled, ye can see that. I should be after preaching to the multitude, faith now.’
The multitude. Rings a bell.
‘Why do you talk like that?’ Moon said. ‘It’s nonsense. You can’t take me in with that – it’s inept.’
The Risen Christ sighed.
‘What about them bodies, then?’ he asked.
‘What about them?’
‘I’m thinking there’s going to be trouble all right when they come to open the carpet.’
‘I suppose so.’ He supposed so.
The Risen Christ said hopefully, ‘Maybe an’ all they’ll be thinking the lion killed them.’
‘A performing lion, you mean? Shot her with a pistol and wrapped them up in a carpet?’
The Risen Christ thought about this.
‘No, they won’t be believin’ that,’ he said mournfully; and brightened up – ‘The cowboys then, shot her.’
‘One of them did as a matter of fact.’
‘No, no, she was dead from the start.’
‘Not originally.’ He thought about Marie. ‘She was very nice, very quiet, you know. French.’
‘Is that right? And the feller?’
‘He was a General.’
‘Went to his fathers with his boots on his feet, God rest his soul … What did you say it was overtook him?’
‘A bottle.’
‘Ah, the drink is a terrible thing.’ He sighed. ‘I should be preaching against it and all manner of things, I was after addressing the multitude at St Paul’s.’
‘They wouldn’t have let you anyway. Not with the funeral and all.’
‘Important feller, was he?’
r />
‘Yes,’ Moon said. ‘The saviour of democracy.’
‘Only democracy?’ said the Risen Christ with a certain hauteur. ‘And is democracy going to help, I’m asking you? Faith,’ he added though whether by way of exclamation or exhortation Moon could not tell.
He felt suddenly resentful.
‘I hate the Irish,’ Moon said with distinctness, desperate to draw blood. ‘I hate them. I despise them and their bloody Post Office and their maudlin boring songs about their tin-pot comic-opera Revolution. They’re dishonest and lazy and bigoted, sentimental peasants engaged in mass glorification of a past without glory. No wonder it’s a country celebrated entirely for its refugees.’
‘You may be right,’ said the Risen Christ. ‘I don’t know any Irishmen myself. Would you be after having a crust of bread, yer honour? I haven’t had a morsel pass me lips for three days.’
Moon looked at him blankly.
‘It’s not my house,’ he said finally, and hauled himself upright. He found he could not negotiate the stairs except on all fours. The Risen Christ got up beside him and offered his shoulder. Together they climbed the stairs.
On the first landing they looked through the open door of the drawing-room and saw two strangers inside, one in the act of sticking a number on the mirror, the other making notations on a clipboard.
They went on up. On the second floor Moon let go the Risen Christ and held on to the door of Lady Malquist’s bedroom.
‘Thank you,’ he said and knocked quietly.
There was no answer. He opened the door and looked into the room. There was no one to be seen or heard. The other doors leading out of the bedroom were closed. Moon hobbled across to the bed and then Laura’s voice called out from inside the drawn curtains.
‘Who is it?’
‘Me,’ said Moon.
The perfume flask lay unstoppered and empty on the floor. He looked through the fold of the curtain. She lay on her back, her eyes open and desperate.
‘I can’t sleep, Bosie.’
Her serious smile caught him unprotected, cutting right through the time since he had left her, and he regained his balance within his familiar troubled concern for the moment, his capacity for love. He felt ashamed, as though he had deserted her.
Moon knelt down by the bed.
‘I’m sorry I had to go away.’
‘I thought of you, Bosie.’
He tried to think of her thinking of him, and floundered in his gratitude. He leaned over and stroked her cheek.
‘Bosie, you’ve hurt your hand.’
‘It’s all right, I got knocked down by a lion. It scratched me.’
‘My, you must have been having a time.’
‘Yes,’ Moon said. ‘I have really.’
‘Poor Bosie.’
They smiled absurdly at each other.
‘Oh, I got you something,’ he said pulling at his pocket.
She sat up happily. ‘Oh, Bosie, let’s have some now.’
Instantly Moon remembered the birthday on which his chief present turned out to be a dressing-gown when all expectations had pointed to a football.
‘I found it for you,’ he said miserably. ‘In the Park where you fell down.’
He gave her the shoe.
‘Oh, Bosie, thank you. What a nice thought.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, really. You are sweet.’
He put his face against her hand.
‘Can we get married if you’re pregnant?’
‘Why, of course we can, Bosie.’
‘Do you think you are?’ he beseeched her, and she stared at him with bright haunted eyes.
‘You better go and wash your hand, Bosie, before you get tetanus or something. Is your leg better?’
‘Shall I come back?’
‘Of course you shall. Come back later. I’ll try to have a little sleep.’
Moon stood up and she smiled him away but before he let the curtain drop he saw her lying stiff with her eyes open and empty.
He limped to the bathroom taking off his overcoat and jacket, and closed the door. Water was rushing into both tubs. The bathroom still held Laura’s presence, hot and scented with the air of purified sensuality. He dropped his clothes in a corner and turned the hot tap to fill the basin but no water came out till he turned off the two baths.
His shirt sleeve was torn and there was a deep scratch on his muscle. It felt stiff and was blue at the edges. He washed it carefully and then washed the cuts on his hands. He sat on the edge of the nearest bath to take off his shoes and single sock, and untied the handkerchief and the cravat and unbuckled the belt. There was blood all over his left foot and the hot water made his wounds soft till they seeped new blood. He tied the handkerchief round one foot and the belt round the other and the cravat, less successfully, round his arm. Carrying his shoes and his sock he paused at the door to the bedroom, and then turned and knocked at the second door leading to Lord Malquist’s dressing-room.
‘Who is it?’ he heard Jane call.
‘Me.’
‘Come in then.’
On the striped fur divan under the window Jane and Lord Malquist were absorbed, with a dispassion that was almost statuesque, in an embrace of Laocoon complexity. Jane was balanced on the base of her spine with her right foot hooked round her neck. The ninth earl knelt behind her with his right arm snaked under her armpit and up behind her head to hold it down, while with his free hand he held her left foot at shoulder-level apparently helping her to conjoin it with her right.
Between them they managed to complete the symmetry of her contortion, and the ninth earl disengaged himself leaving Jane’s ducked head and foreshortened body squeezed into the frame of her legs which curved down from her crossed ankles, changing colour from caramel to cream at the stocking-tops and meeting in a perfect oval, nested on a scrap of blue lace: a roué’s Easter egg.
The egg rolled over onto its side.
‘Hello, it’s the mad bomber. We’re doing yoghourt exercises. Falcon and I are going to be Buddhists. What’s the matter with your feet?’
‘Dear boy! Do come in.’
Moon went in.
‘Why Buddhists?’ he asked.
‘Because,’ said Jane, ‘we don’t want to come back. You explain it to him, Falcon.’
Lord Malquist, in his shirt sleeves but elegant as ever, had picked up a pile of envelopes from the dressing-table and was looking through them.
‘What’s going on?’ Moon asked in a general way though without hope of any answer that would take it all in.
‘Well, dear boy, it’s not easy to explain. But the gist of it seems to be that reincarnation is the common lot except for a dedicated few who lead lives of such exemplary uselessness that they are allowed to escape into Nirvana. I may have got that wrong, but anyway Mrs Moon has just achieved the third contemplative position.’
Demned cunning, those Chinese philosophers.
‘I mean what’s happening altogether?’
‘Altogether, I am about to bathe. Mrs Moon also wishes to bathe. You may bathe too, if you desire. I should put that arm in a sling. How very fortunate that it is not your writing hand. Have you got your journal of yesterday? Perhaps you would read it to me in my bath-oh, and here are today’s letters. I’d be obliged if you could look through them and let me know if there is anything important.’
‘I think I’ve contemplated enough for now,’ Jane said.
Moon took the letters from him.
‘But do you mean that we just carry on as before?’ he asked. ‘As if nothing has happened?’
‘My dear fellow, the whole secret of life is to carry on as if nothing has happened.’
(‘Falcon, I don’t want to contemplate any more.’)
‘But won’t there be any trouble?’ asked Moon hopefully. For a moment he could believe that the recent excesses of his habitually implausible conduct were all part of the world’s day-to-day occurence, to be rationalised, made commonplace and
forgotten.
‘Yes, I suppose there will,’ said Lord Malquist. ‘but there’s always trouble, and if you relate it to real troubles (pick one at random – the persecution of the Tibetans or the endless noise of motorcars driving into one another) then really it is not very significant. And of course, the troubles of the Tibetans, when related to the total misery imposed on the history of man, is not very significant either.’ He paused. ‘Besides, it wasn’t the only damned flamingo in the world. What’s in the letters?’
(‘Darling, would you—?’)
‘Mr Moon?’
Moon stirred at last. He opened the letters. There were four. The first was from a bootmaker in St James who with much well-bred apology and obsequious tact mentioned, rather than demanded, the sum of forty-three pounds seven shillings and fourpence outstanding from three years before. The second and third, from a hatter and a tailor established within a few yards of the bootmaker, differed from the first only in the sums due. (’A conspiracy, dear boy. That’s a criminal offence.’) The fourth consisted of a single sheet on which had been stuck words cut out from newspapers and so arranged to read:
goLd will not BrinG back a life or BUy your Life FilThY inHuman SCUm AnnacRoniSM must perish TO make way For THE new ERA no moRe Under the yolk of oPpresser i want yoU TO KNOW WHY you diE
The impersonal effect of this communication was offset by the signature ‘W. Cuttle’ – presumably added in a last-minute mood of defiance.
‘Cuttle?’ said the ninth earl. ‘Cuttle?’
(‘Please, darling, I can’t undo myself—’)
‘Cuttle?’
‘We knocked down his wife,’ Moon said. ‘He’s an anarchist.’
‘What?’
‘Yesterday. It’s in the newspaper – about Mrs Cuttle being knocked down by a runaway coach.’
The ninth earl brooded on this.
‘Not a runaway malquist?’
‘No, my lord, I don’t think so.’
‘I despair, Mr Moon, I despair.’
He moved away towards the bathroom, remarking to Jane, ‘Please do not struggle, dear lady, it is against the ideals of Buddhist detachment.’
The bathroom door closed. Jane began to cry. Moon stared out of the window.
O’Hara sat on the coach in the rain. The horses stood resigned, accepting the rain on their backs.