She went around emptying ashtrays into a plastic bag.
‘And how’s Mrs Drudge today?’
‘Drudge-Perkins. And it’s Miss, not Mrs. How’s Mr Blaskin, the eminent public figure, this afternoon?’
‘Awful. I threw my guts up in court this morning, all over the magistrate. Arthur Cobalt’s his name. He’s a director of my publishers, otherwise I suppose I’d have gone to gaol.’
‘That might do you a lot of good,’ she said, as I had known she would.
‘Drudge by name, and Drudge by nature. Why don’t you say something unexpected? If only there was a spark of originality in you.’
‘Gilbert,’ she said, ‘I didn’t come up here to be insulted.’
I lay on the settee. ‘Then go back down.’
‘No. There is something known as Women’s Liberation.’
Being in a foul mood, I laughed even louder than usual. ‘Women’s Lib? You aren’t into all that feminist stuff, are you? Or did you only hear it mentioned on Radio Four this morning? You know what feminism is?’
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘I know you don’t. I’ll tell you. It’s a lesbian trick to get black women into bed.’
She staggered, and gripped a heavy glass ashtray, and for one dizzying moment I thought she would have the guts to throw it. I often thought we’d end up murdering one another, supposing in the same breath that there were worse ways to go. But I had said too much. I could see it in her face. I touched her wrist but she snatched it away as if I was a walking hot poker. ‘Sorry I said that, Drudgy. Feminism is the noblest movement of the century. I’m all for it.’ All I wanted was to get down to writing Lord Moggerhanger’s life story, or add a few paragraphs to my thirteenth novel, or crash off another couple of pages of the latest Sidney Blood exploit, which I was doing for an outright fee for Pulp Books.
‘Mrs Drudge,’ I said, in my Noel Coward writer-in-his-country-house-blithe-spirit-and-alls-right-with-the-world tone, ‘would you be so good as to get me something to eat? I’m going into my study to work.’ I stood up and, unfortunately, farted. ‘I think I’ve got a novel coming on.’
Dismal watched us, like a nonentity at a tennis match.
‘Mr Blaskin,’ she said, ‘this kind of behaviour isn’t worthy of you.’
I smiled. ‘All’s fair in the sex war. I’m eternally grateful to Women’s Lib for bringing it out in the open. Now I can really have a good time. It was so dull before.’
Stop, I said to myself. Write, don’t speak. It was too late. She had decided to retaliate. ‘You should get married to a nice young man and settle down.’
‘I would, but women fit me better. Not that I haven’t done a share of bum-fucking in my time, men and women, come to that. After all, I’m a proper Englishman, even though I don’t spy for Russia. Especially when I was in the army, though we were only lads then, but I prefer to fuck women because they’ve got tits and, in general, nicer faces. Would you like to suck me off? I haven’t had a gam for a long time. Not that it’ll do me much good. I think I’ve got homeosexual tendencies more than the other sort.’
I had gone too far, which was just as far as I wanted to go. She huffed into the kitchen, and I went into my study. ‘If you want to bring yourself off,’ I shouted, ‘don’t use the coffee grinder. You broke it last time.’
Peace – but did I want it? I closed the door, then opened the rest of my mail. There was a letter inviting me to take part in a conference entitled ‘Is the Book Doomed?’ and calling for a quick answer. I didn’t know whether the book was doomed, but I felt that I was. Domed, at any rate, but I couldn’t tell them so without being impolite. I picked up the phone and sent the cheapest telegram I could devise. CAN’T COME BLIND DRUNK BLASKIN.
A letter from my publisher wanted to know what I would call my collected works he was foolish enough to think of bringing out. I scribbled a note to say he should call it The Dustbin Edition, to be printed by the Misprint Press, and sold at the Throwaway Bookshop. He didn’t know that the only occupation a madman can follow is that of writer.
I’d had enough of letters for one day. All the income tax demands and bills were thrown into the paperbin for Dismal to play Post Office with, which left practically nothing, and that made it seem as if I had already done some work. To show willing, however, I looked at the electric typewriter, and noticed that the letter H had been popping up unbidden lately, in such a way as to suggest – which had probably been true – that I was drunk: ‘It sheems as if I shtruck shomething shinister in the shcheme of thingsh.’ I pulled the paper out and sent it flying after the bills and postcards, then picked up my favourite ballpoint and got to work on Moggerhanger’s life, able to do so after a few days of nattering to various scarfaced Soho doorkeepers. The only way to begin was to reconnect the Trollopian tubes and sail in with no concessions to diplomacy precisely because the evil old windbag was paying me well:
Serf Moggerhanger who followed his knightly master in the Crusades to Jerusalem unknowingly made a fire with part of the true cross. He was known as the master cross chopper, until the Infidels caught him one night doing the same to the crescent, so they sent back his head in a bucket. Sailor Moggerhanger went to the Spanish Main, returned with a sack of loot and two golden earrings. He also came back with a wooden leg – somebody else’s. Soldier Moggerhanger went to Flanders in the wake of Uncle Toby, and swore more horribly than anyone else. Moggerhanger was a footpad, otherwise known as Muggerhanger, because he mugged and was hanged. Another Moggerhanger robbed on the highway, a handsome devil whom the ladies (and some of their dandies) loved. Ned Moggerhanger of Calverton broke machines, but he broke the wrong one, which was a device for dispensing small beer in greater quantities than had hitherto been thought possible, for which he was strung up on a greenwood tree by the weavers. Another Moggerhanger fell from the high tower of a church while stealing lead. His son enlisted and became a trooper in the Light Brigade. He rode into the Valley of Death, and came back with gold coins chinking in his pockets, and the teeth of a Russian gunner embedded in his fist. Sergeant Moggerhanger (a cousin of Crimean Moggerhanger) went to the Northwest Frontier of India, raping and looting, and made a tobacco pouch from a virgin’s pap. Constable Moggerhanger of the London docks took bribes, and went blind in one eye from too much drink. The crew of the Narcissus threw Merchant Seaman Moggerhanger overboard. When he swam back to the boat, they mutinied. He festered in brothels and learned how to smuggle. In the Great War, Lance-Corporal Moggerhanger got to within ten miles of the Western Front and, hearing the noise of massed artillery, deserted. He was one of the very few who got back to England and was never caught. In other words, he had turned as White as a Sheet, Wiped his face on a Cambric handkerchief, broke his Arrows, said his Amens, and walked halfway home from Passion Dale. He afterwards traded in Nigeria, came back destitute, and went on the Dole. That was Jack Moggerhanger, but Claud, who didn’t know whether he was his father’s nephew or his son, saw home territory as his prime concern. All in all, it must be said that a Moggerhanger loves his children, his mother, and his country, unless they stand in his way. As for his friends, count me out.
Mrs Drudge came in with a plate of steaming goulash, tinned peas, fried eggs, white toast and a pint of black coffee as weak as licorice water. ‘Here comes old grumble-cunt,’ I said to cheer her up.
She stiffened.
‘Don’t drop that tray, for God’s sake.’
‘You hate women, don’t you?’
‘Not more than most people. At least I’m not one of those Englishmen who holds his breath when he walks by a woman. I suppose that’s the only sort you could really love.’
She drew a deep sigh. It was like water coming up from the deepest well in the desert. If there was one thing I admired it was breeding. I still do. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, Gilbert, but do you think there are rats in the building?’
‘I don’t see why there shouldn’t be,’ I said. ‘There seems to be just about everyt
hing else. Anyway, you’d be looking at one if I weren’t so bald.’
‘Seriously, I heard a scratching above my head while I was in the kitchen. Maybe the pigeons have broken in again.’
I scooped up the food with relish, which may not have been good, but it was all I had. ‘If I never wonder why you’re so good to me it’s only because I realise how rotten I am to you.’ She flushed, whether with pleasure or pain I did not know. I was the only person in the world who could get either – or both – reactions out of her, and whatever it was, she felt more alive at such times, I swear, than when she was on her own or with other people. And when she had a reaction of any sort I felt waves of lechery rising in me, and having gobbled two-thirds of her execrable meal I put my arms around her fairly broad arse.
She made an effort to move away. ‘Leave me alone, you beast.’
I set the plate down for Dismal to lick. ‘You know I love you. The only true words I ever speak are those plain unadorned ones which describe my undying love for you.’
‘You make it hard for me to believe.’
‘Will you type out this bit of my Moggerhanger book? Jenny Potash won’t be back from Benidorm till next week.’
‘Perhaps I’ll do it later – if you promise to mend your ways.’
I put my arms around her, her magnificent breasts against my waistcoat, my lips at her cheek as she turned her head away. ‘You’re not too old to be a mother,’ I spooned. ‘Don’t you want a baby, before it’s too late? Imagine having a son to support you in your declining years, a big handsome chinless wonder weeping salt tears over his O levels? Surely, my lovely one, you must have thought of it, and if so, I would feel honoured if you’d choose me for the supreme sacrifice.’
I eased the zip from the nape of her warm neck to the valley of her ample bum. Two fingers unhooked her brassiere and my hands closed in front over her hot breasts. From early on I knew one had to be deft with hooks and eyes, and in my youth I had practised for days on a seamstress’s dummy to make sure, drunk or sober, I had it off pat.
The muscles of her broad posterior relaxed as her perfume and make-up gassed me into further eloquence. ‘Think of a little baby,’ I muttered into her ear, pulling her dress forward and her brassiere off. ‘All yours to bring up and turn into yourself with a man’s face. You’d be the proudest mother by the sandpit, or pushing the perambulator through the park with the most cooing, laughing, puking, shitting little lovely kid you could ever have imagined. But if he picks up a pen, chop his head off.’
‘Gilbert,’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s not right to talk like that.’
‘Just his hand, then.’
‘You’re too ghastly.’
‘I know, but all the same, I mean it when I say it would be an honour for me to be the father of your child. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, or shall ever love anyone, in my life. We’re so much made for each other that it pains me to be near you. Unless I fuck you I’m burning in the fires of hell. Surely you must understand that, from your cave of ice?’
‘I don’t want you,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want you.’
I put the three middle fingers of her left hand into my mouth, and laid her right hand against my erection, then put both hands down her bloomers, and found her burning like the inside of a compost heap.
Her protestations of ‘Never! Never!’ were belied by the state in which I found her. I knew her from of old. She had never wanted me. She always objected, right to the end. Even on this occasion she allowed herself – readily enough – to be piloted into the bedroom, as if I had just cut in on an excuse-me quickstep and we were going towards the refreshment table. I kicked the door in Dismal’s face, who had followed us across the living room as if he wanted to be in on the nuptial roundabout.
‘I shan’t thank you for it.’ She lay back, and lifted so that I could draw her bloomers off. ‘I shan’t thank you for it.’ Though she didn’t let go of that icy grip on her soul, she was let go of by a demon that was even more deeply in her, and up went her head and china-blue eyes and flickering lashes as she was taken out of herself sufficiently to stop her nagging that she wouldn’t enjoy it or thank me for it if she did. Did she think I cared whether she enjoyed it or not, as long as I enjoyed it myself? She would certainly not enjoy it if I wanted her to enjoy it, so at least this way there was a chance that she would. I did want her to, though, I certainly did. The lid went off, and as I pumped in for the finals all I saw were her lovely breasts and her gorgeous swan neck, hearing her moans increasing in volume as if the breath was being pulled out of her, while near the end, when her legs would have floated across different continents if she had opened them any wider, the lid went off me as well with such a kettle of steam I thought it would never come back even if I sent a twelve month search party to look for it among my scattered entrails. And, after all, she did thank me for it. And I thanked her as well, which, under the circumstances, was the least I could do.
‘I shall never forgive you.’ She turned away to fasten her suspenders. ‘Never.’
I wiped myself on her bloomers. ‘You said that the first time, several hundred years ago. And you’ve said it every time since. What you mean is that you’ll never forgive yourself. Didn’t you enjoy it?’
She turned to me so that I could zip up her dress. Such little attentions were worth a thousand bitter quarrels – to her.
‘I did not enjoy it.’
I pushed her away. ‘You must have done. I heard it. I couldn’t help but hear it. They must have heard it across at Harrods and thought another shoplifter had been caught. In fact every time you come it sounds like another execution in Red Square. I’ve never heard anything like it.’
Her lower lip trembled, but whether in rage or misery I couldn’t say. I don’t believe she could, either, and I almost felt sorry for her. ‘I don’t know why I love you,’ she said.
‘Could it just be that I make you come,’ I said, fingers in the armholes of my waistcoat, ‘in spite of yourself? Anybody else would take you seriously when you told him you were frigid, and be reduced to wanking himself off on your belly button while you looked on with your cold superior smile. You know, if there’s anything I hate you for it’s because you make me say what I really feel, and I can never forgive you for that. That’s the only weapon you’ve got over me.’ I kissed her again, very nicely I thought, anything to stop her weeping. ‘I don’t know whether I love you, but you have a fatal attraction for me, and I suppose that’s more than I can say for practically anyone.’
She cried like a little girl for about ten seconds. I held up my watch and timed her. I had never understood her, and never would, and that fact more than her distress made me occasionally despise her. ‘You should be smiling and happy,’ I ranted, ‘but you’re too mean. You should thank me for it. You should be grateful. Every time it happens to me my backbone goes to pieces, but I’m still grateful.’
‘You’re vile,’ she said.
‘You say that because you only came once. You want to come forty times and fall dead into oblivion, then you’d think you had a good time and say thank you with your dying breath. I don’t blame you. But this isn’t Swan Lake. It’s Southwest One, Knightsbridge-on-Harrods, the great Middle East emporium. Nothing special anymore.’
She followed me into the living room. I put ‘The Blue Danube’ on the hi-fi and poured two drinks.
‘You know I never touch that horrid stuff,’ she said, so I knocked both of them back.
‘You’re like Messalina, the whore of the Roman world. You’re getting above your Sunday schoolteacher self.’ I felt an ugly mood coming on. ‘And you haven’t finished cleaning the place up yet. How much longer do you expect me to tolerate a slut like you?’
She stood straight, and put on her snow-maiden expression. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t drink so much.’
I went into a knot to prevent myself hitting her. ‘Oh, do you? The reason I drink is that I’ll soon be dead, and then I won’t be able to do it anymo
re.’ I heard noises, a heavy tread. ‘Somebody’s walking about upstairs.’
She put her hand on my arm, and listened. It stopped. ‘There isn’t anything. Are you all right, Mr Blaskin?’
‘It was those two drinks. Maybe you’re right, darling. I ought to go out and get some air. Oh my sweet. I don’t want to die.’
She kissed me, as if convinced I was having a funny turn and might well be about to croak. ‘Perhaps it would be best. You’ve done enough work for today, Gilbert. Shall I put you to bed with a hot drink?’
I know, and I’ve been told even more often than I’ve told myself that, being a writer, I should know exactly what I’m going to do before I do it, and that I should be aware of whatever I intend saying before I say it. Then I would be able to moderate my action and speech accordingly. Dear reader, believe me when I say that I am that dangerous beast who knows precisely what he will say before he says it, and exactly what he will do before he does it, but says it and does it all the same, to my everlasting shame but instant gratification.
I smacked her soundly across that lovely frosty face. ‘Don’t nanny me. I don’t need you to tell me when I’ve done enough work.’ I poured another drink before she could express her opinion of the wicked treatment I’d meted out. ‘And stop gobbling all my food while I’m off the premises. I spent forty pounds on that last Harrods order, and there’s practically nothing left. I’ve had hardly any of it, and Dismal doesn’t know how to get in the fridge. No wonder you have such orgasms, eating so much rich food.’
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