“You’re trying to fuck me up again.”
“Michael, I wish you wouldn’t swear like one of the other ranks. Your sister wouldn’t be much impressed on hearing it. So curb your guttersnipe language when you meet her.”
My instinct was to get straight back to Upper Mayhem, where at least Clegg and Dismal weren’t off their trollies. But my sister? Blaskin rattled on about a sister I couldn’t possibly have, as if feminism had penetrated to his spinal cord at last—which I knew to be impossible. If his rigmarole had to do with the plot of his novel it was a swamp I didn’t care to slop across. It must be another twist in his personal devilry, which led him to string people up and watch them dance.
But my sister? He’d never sprung anything like that before, though the fertility of his invention was as rich as Nile mud, in which snakes and crocodiles thrashed about. If there was a sister in the offing, and it wasn’t merely the workings of his malicious mind, I had little to worry about, and in any case my curiosity would soon be satisfied.
I somnambulated down the escalator wondering whether I’d stay in the real world long enough to change at Holborn for Knightsbridge, and not inadvertently end up at London Heathrow, buying a ticket on a Jumbo to New Zealand, like Doris who I’d met when she was fleeing to Stansted, and never come back. Sister, my arse!
I stayed on the Central Line, and got off at Marble Arch, wanting the enjoyment of a walk down Park Lane. A drizzle began, but my mac and trilby kept it off. On crossing the lights at Mount Street I spotted the familiar contraption of Delphick’s panda wagon being trundled along in the bus lane.
A flat-capped copper marched by Delphick’s side, shaking his head at what daft tale he was hearing. A couple of foreign tourists snapped the apparition for their album, and Delphick called pettishly that they owed him ten quid for the privilege of the photograph which, though they might own it, shouldn’t forget that the copyright belonged to him.
“Now you just turn round this corner,” the policeman said, not unkindly, I thought, “and leave the tourists alone. And don’t give me any more lip, either. If I see you in a bus lane again you’ll be in trouble.”
“I’m only trying to advertise my poems, officer. I’m a poet, and it’s my living.” I was unlucky in his spotting me at that moment, because if there’s one thing I dislike, for obvious reasons, it was being brought to the attention of the law. “He’ll vouch for me, officer,” he cried. “Hey, Michael! Michael Cullen!”
The policeman ignored him, and when he’d gone I said to Delphick: “If you shout my name in the street like that again I’ll pull the straw from your panda, throw it in the gutter, piss on it, and make you eat every bit. I thought you were in Cambridge, anyway?”
He lit a cigarette. “I was, until last night. Today I’m pulling my pet panda around the West End, to let everybody know I’m giving a reading in Covent Garden tonight. Why don’t you come and hear me? It’s only five quid entrance. Four, if you pay me now.”
I ignored the human extortion machine. “Your panda looks fatter than a couple of days ago. What do you feed it on? Looks like it’s been to the cleaners as well.”
He puffed smoke at my face. “Not everybody notices that.”
Wasn’t it Einstein who said that imagination was worth more than intelligence? Being so brilliant, he must have been right, but mine was equal, because I had enough intelligence at times to make my imagination work, and it laboured now to come up with a startling deduction concerning Ronald Delphick. “I don’t suppose they do,” I said. “But what I think is that you emptied your panda in Cambridge of all those little packets of drugs, and took delivery of another load to hawk in London. In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, whoever your contact was had a new panda costume waiting for you.”
All through this startling accusation his features under their mask of hair turned every colour from purple to back again. “Fucking wrong, mate. Do you think I’d get myself escorted down Park Lane by the fuzz if I was carrying stuff like that?”
“Frankly, yes I do. It’s just what a cunning fuckface like you would revel in. Another thing is that a further cover for your one-man drugs transport service is to convince people you haven’t got two ha’pennies for a penny, while all the time spending pots of cash extending and beautifying your property at Doggerel Bank. I’ve had my eyes on you for some time, my lad, and if I was Inspector Knacker-of-the-Yard I’d have sent you down for life five years ago, but I was never one to shop anybody, so you’re safe with me. On the other hand, if ever you try to cadge anything from me again, or come to Upper Mayhem expecting a free doss down, I’ll get you run in.”
A laugh proved him fully incorrigible. “Oh what a story! Me a drug-running millionaire! I’ll do a poem about that.”
“And dedicate it to Oscar Cross of the Green Toe Gang while you’re at it,” I said. “That’s who you’re working for, isn’t it?”
He put on a very nasty look. “You can bollocks, you can.”
For years he had been pushing his poxed-up panda up and down the Great North Road, and sooner or later Oscar Cross had got the idea of using him as a way of shifting consignments of dope from one place to another. The method was slow, of course, but it got there in the end, and was no less welcome. I hoped that in not too long the police would smell a panda-rat and pull Delphick in, though at the same time I couldn’t begrudge the rogue his earnings, since I had taken advantage of the same trade often enough, which luckily he didn’t know about, otherwise he would certainly have shopped me.
He spat on his palms like a workman about to start building a block of flats on the Isle of Dogs, and adjusted the panda into a straight-backed position, and put himself between the shafts. “I don’t like you, Cullen.”
“Not after all the kindnesses I’ve done for you? But you can stop worrying. I don’t come from the sort of close knit family that tips off the coppers. You must be popular in Cambridge though. I’ll bet every student there is so high after your delivery they’re tripping across the glittering spires like bats on their birthday. They might not even be able to come down in time for their exams. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
My jibe went into his heavily fleshed ribs like the nail file of a Swiss Army knife. He came to me at the edge of the pavement. I’d really rattled him, which gave me a certain amount of satisfaction. “Ashamed of hopping up those wankers? Those spoiled pampered three-year skivers from privileged homes? They’re all idle nonces from public schools who’ll be earning a million a year on the stock exchange as soon as they’ve graduated.”
“Steady on,” I said, at the froth on his lips. “A lot are from ordinary homes. They’ll have a struggle to get their degrees. A few weeks ago I gave a lift to a youth who was working in the carrot fields earning a bob or two to make ends meet. He told me he was your cousin, and said you’d taken his last twelve quid and never given it back, when he was a kid and saving to buy an electronic calculator. Now that you’re making a fortune on drug running why don’t you send him a cheque? He could do with it. The poor sod was on his uppers.”
A man carrying a rolled umbrella dropped a pound in a tin below the panda’s chin. “Thank you, sir,” Delphick called. “That’s another one for poetry!” He put the coin in his pocket and came back to me. “I don’t have a cousin. I never did have, and if I did I don’t have one now. So many dropouts go around saying they’re my cousin, or son, or brother, or daughter, but it’s just because they’ve read about me in the press and want to claim kinship. So tell me no more about all the stray Delphicks in the world.” Back at his panda pram, he was about to push it away. “I come from an ancient and noble family, and don’t you forget it. I’m the last of the Delphicks. No more Delphicks left but me.”
I watched his progress towards Grosvenor Square, and then, having been so engrossed in our altercation that I hadn’t noticed the drizzle soaking into my blotting paper Burberry, I walked quickly to t
he underpass and across to Knightsbridge.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
Mabel answered the buzzer at Dumbell Mansions, and held the door to the flat open as I stepped from the lift. “Oh, Michael, I’m so glad to see you. Do come in. I’ll put your coat on a hanger to dry.”
It was unusual to be treated so like one of the family, but she wore a tie to her pearl buttoned blouse, which may have inspired her to pay more attention to the hierarchy. Blaskin’s voice boomed from the living room: “Michael, do come in, dear boy, and meet your long-lost sister.”
I was alarmed on hearing he still inhabited the batty hayloft of the novelist, knowing his moods to be as contagious as the flu on a tube train.
“He’s in quite a state,” Mabel whispered, on taking my hat. I should have known better than to call on him for a relaxing drink and sandwich. Where he got this sister nonsense I couldn’t think, but he was nothing if not entertaining, though I reflected on going in what a cross it was to have a novelist for your father.
He wore neat sharply creased twill trousers, an open-necked white shirt, a pearl buttoned wine-dark waistcoat, and shoes with as well polished a shine as Mabel could make. Seated on the vast leather settee, he had a long arm proprietorially around the shoulder of …
I was never one for shouting at the onset of shock, and sharing it with the rest of the world. Not me. Quick moves were my style, smart reactions for self-preservation, giving thought only sufficient time for me to decide what the emergency was about before battling in. And yet, and yet, as this encounter proved, I could be essentially inert when it suited me least. Why didn’t I turn and run? What man of action was I? A few peaceful days at Upper Mayhem had unthreaded me.
“This is the greatest day for me since—I don’t know when. Since Victory in Europe, perhaps. God knows where I was at the time. Probably throwing up in Piccadilly Circus. But I don’t see how it can’t turn out as good a day for you as for me, Michael. But come right in, and have a glass of champagne. Opening a bottle of the best is the least I can do on such a unique occasion.”
I could only surmise that Sophie had tracked me down from the evidence I had given her on the train. She had phoned Blaskin, who talked her into calling at the flat, and told her she would find me here, though he had done so only with the idea of luring her into his lascivious clutches, unable to know she had long since fallen into mine. Not that it would make any difference to him, because they were already drooling over each other so disgustingly that I felt mad with jealousy.
His rubbery lips nuzzled her to an extent that told me he must have thought up the father and daughter gag to make them more lecherous for going to bed, which accounted for the grief on poor Mabel’s face.
I put both hands on a chairback to keep me upright, but my astonishment was as nothing compared to Sophie’s. She needed, though I couldn’t think why, time to recognise me, and when Blaskin said: “This is Michael, your brother,” she gave a short throat-wobbling scream and fell back senseless.
“What the hell’s going on?” I shouted. “What’s all this brother and sister lark? If it’s your idea of drumming up a plot for a novel you can go and inseminate yourself.”
Genuine obscenities were ready for launching, and I held them back, because though Sophie lay in a half-fainting state, eyelashes flickering like those of a Ukrainian doll, I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t overhear and think badly of me. Mabel came from the kitchen to draw a cold wet flannel across Sophie’s forehead, while Blaskin, mumbling his distress, pressed Sophie’s hands to his lips.
Even now I couldn’t tell whether his expression was of undying malice, or tender concern for her condition, though if the latter this was the first time I had witnessed it. “Michael, she’s my long-lost daughter. She wrote a couple of weeks ago, and gave incontrovertible proof of the fact this morning.”
He regained his usual poise behind the settee, stood with hands in the armholes of his waistcoat, an attitude of pride he had never shown for me. On kneeling to kiss her forehead he looked up: “How dashed clever I must have been to pump a specimen of the female species into the world, but how sad not to know till now, when there’s so little life left to enjoy! Still, mustn’t get sentimental. That would be death for a novelist.”
Sophie beamed her lovely dark eyes on me as I drew the chair close to stop myself falling, hoping she’d deny any blood connection between us. “Tell me it isn’t true,” I croaked.
“Oh Michael, it is. He’s my father.” She looked stunned, as if like me she was close to a nervous crack-up, lips tight, and eyes uncertain about what or who to settle on, still unable to believe that she had come to meet her father, and then had a putative brother wheeled in. I sympathised, though not sufficiently for it to be mistaken for a sign of loving kinship. “When Gilbert—my father—told me I had a brother,” she said, “I didn’t know what to expect or think.”
When she began to cry, and Blaskin all but licked up her tears, I prayed for a twenty-two carat bijou gem of a nightmare from which I could at least wake up. She looked around with what I hoped was panic and disbelief, put a finger to her lips, as if pleading with me to say nothing concerning our previous meetings. For one irresponsible moment I was tempted to let Blaskin know, in revenge for foisting this situation on me, that I had already committed incest, and that it was his fault for not having used french letters in his feckless youth. I wanted to kill him as well for omitting to don condoms with my mother, because if he had taken care neither Sophie nor I would have been locked by such come-to-bed eyes as happened now. The Wagon-Lits couplings between Boulogne and Milan came back with intense clarity, and a sudden slide of the tongue between Sophie’s lips told me she was re-running the scene as well.
Blaskin turned to me. “You don’t seem to have quite taken in what I said, Michael. I present you with a beautiful sister, and there hasn’t been a word of joy or welcome. How can it be? Your presence certainly had a profound effect on her, to the extent that she hasn’t been able to say anything. But you might show some response.”
“I’m overwhelmed with happiness,” was the best I could do.
“Give her a kiss, then.”
Her recovery was quicker than mine, perhaps because she was a woman, and had known of the connection longer. I held one of the hands that had previously roamed my naked body, and leaned forward to kiss her lips. “I love you, Michael,” she said, for Blaskin to hear. “It’s love at first sight, dear brother.”
“And I love you. I’ve never had a sister. It’s going to be tremendous. What times we’ll have. It’s the most stunning thing that’s ever happened to me.”
When the contact went on too long, for decency’s sake we drew apart. Blaskin’s expression was—I can’t find a more accurate word—mawkish. Someone who hadn’t known him for long would have found him unrecognisable. Such simpering pride and irredeemable self-love had never before come out of a novelist. “I’m sure you’ll both have a lot to talk about.” He turned to Mabel, and became himself again: “Don’t just stand there. Bring us some coffee. Then you can think of what to cook for lunch. We’ll be hungry by then.”
Nothing in this situation could be real. It was all a piece of theatre, Blaskin suddenly taken with the notion of writing for the stage. Either that or he had got to know Sophie a few days ago—maybe in a club or pub, or even a post office queue—and they had devised this scenario between them as a bit of cruel S and M to send me crazy. I was having none of it.
And yet, when coffee came, and Sophie talked—on Blaskin urging her to—she related how he had made her mother pregnant, then left her, as he had mine. It was impossible either to doubt or to argue, because every detail slotted in. I speculated as to whether or not in too long he would lumber me with a brother, or brothers, probably twins, with more sisters thrown in. At least Sophie and I hadn’t come with the same mother, which was one good outcome of Blaskin’s scattergun philandering, and I s
uppose the fact that we weren’t full brother and sister accounted for the lechery I felt for Sophie as she proved that we were indeed so closely related.
“Well, my boy”—he couldn’t ask often enough—“how do you feel now?”
“I won’t know for a few months, except it’s as if I’ve won the lottery. It’s a surprise, which I’m sure even a novelist like you can understand.”
His arm went around her again, much to Mabel’s stare of disapproval, while I thought it as well that we were both present, otherwise, daughter or not, incest would be a mere bagatelle to such a walking penis. I still couldn’t credit the fact that the whole thing wasn’t a dummy run for his next novel. He would certainly use it sometime.
He went to a cupboard. “What we need is a fair splash of five-star Napoleon.” The bitten off cork sailed towards the fireplace. He lit a long thin cigar, rolled the empty champagne bottle towards the kitchen for Mabel to pick up, then poured three tumblers of brandy as if it were cold tea. “Oh, father,” Sophie said, with the kind of sexy laugh I recalled from our cavorting on the train, “that’s far too much for me.”
“What? Is that a daughter of mine speaking? I can’t believe it. Take a sip, anyhow. You’ll soon feel as on top of the world as I am.”
I needed a drink, and so did Blaskin, whether he needed it or not, and seeing the pair of us working our gullets to get it down, Sophie took a sip as if she couldn’t go on living without it either. Mabel came in with a platter of roastbeef sandwiches on brown bread, cut neatly into triangles, in her wisdom realising that without something to soak up the alcohol we would soon be on the floor. Blaskin might have had that in mind but, even so, the brandy had such an effect on the three of us that he relaxed enough to fill a tumbler for Mabel: “Join the family party, darling. I’m feeling paternal and expansive. I might even marry you one of these days, and make you the wicked stepmother of my darling daughter. How does that strike you?”