by Alan Coren
In a minute, a dog came round the corner.
‘Well, that’s it, then,’ she said. ‘We’ve seen it before.’
‘I thought we might have done,’ I said, ‘half an hour ago. When they pulled the body out of the water with the boathook.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ she said.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ I said. ‘They’re always pulling bodies out of the water with boathooks. I might have been remembering an old Morse, or an old Wexford, or an old Bergerac.’
‘Or an old Taggart.’
‘Or an old Taggart,’ I said. ‘Exactly.’
‘Instead of an old Frost,’ she said.
I looked back at the old Frost. ‘We could carry on watching,’ I said. ‘After all, it’s only a boathook and a dog, we don’t know how it ends. We don’t know who dunnit.’
‘We might remember,’ she said. ‘There’s another hour to go. We might suddenly remember after 45 minutes. I think there’s a bit, later on, where he argues with his Superintendent. It might jog our memory. It might all come back.’
‘They all argue with their Superintendents,’ I said. ‘It didn’t jog our memory in that Midsomer Murders we watched last week.’
‘No, it didn’t,’ she said. ‘What jogged our memories in that was the nurse on the bicycle.’
‘It didn’t jog mine,’ I said. ‘I was enjoying it. You could’ve kept quiet about it. You could’ve just carried on watching.’
‘No, I couldn’t. As soon as I saw the nurse on the bike, I remembered, and then I remembered there were two slit throats coming up, and then I remembered the killer was the twerp in the blazer. I couldn’t have just sat there after that could I?’
‘He was only pretending to be a twerp,’ I said.
She looked at me.
‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘if you remembered as well, what was the point in either of us watching?’
‘I didn’t remember then,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just remembered now.’
‘You might have remembered then,’ she said. ‘We might have both carried on watching, with just me knowing we’d seen it after the bike bit, until something else happened half an hour later which jogged your memory, and I’d have been watching for half an hour for nothing.’
‘It’s called marriage,’ I said. ‘It is fraught with that kind of thing. I might have not had my memory jogged at all, and then at least one of us would’ve been happy.’
‘Happy,’ she said, ‘is putting it a bit strong. I didn’t even think much of this one . . .’ she waved her glass at the screen ‘. . . when we saw it the first time.’
‘You didn’t say that while we were watching it this time,’ I said, ‘for the hour before the dog came round the corner.’
‘It wasn’t the hour I didn’t think much of the first time,’ she said. ‘Now I know it was the one with the dog, I can remember not thinking much of the whole thing, after it had finished the first time.’
I reached for the remote, and switched off. ‘Don’t you want to know who dunnit?’ she said.
‘Not enough to sit through it for 45 minutes – until he has the row with his Superintendent,’ I said. ‘Even if it doesn’t jog my memory, it might jog yours, and I wouldn’t want to carry on sitting through it knowing you knew who dunnit and just weren’t saying.’
‘But we’re not even certain this is the one where he’s going to have the row,’ she said. ‘It might be the one where his dim but lovable sergeant asks for a transfer to traffic division because his wife is pregnant again and wants him back home at a reasonable hour. If it is that one, the car blows up.’
‘No, I remember the one where the car blows up, and it didn’t have a boathook or a dog that came round the corner. Anyway, it wasn’t his car. Frost’s car has never blown up. You’re thinking of Dalgleish’s car.’
‘The Triumph roadster with the dickie seat?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That is Bergerac’s car.’
‘There’s one Morse we’ve seen three times,’ she said. ‘It was cars that reminded me. Morse’s nice old red Jag got dented. You winced.’
‘I could only have winced the first time,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have forgotten a thing like that.’
‘Who are you kidding?’ she said.
I picked up the programme guide, and peered at it. ‘God, I hate the summer,’ I said, after a bit. ‘Would we have seen Have I Got Old News For You, with Eddie Izzard? Before it had the Old in it, I mean?’
‘Is there anything left in that bottle?’ she said.
84
I Blame the Dealers
The report in yesterday’s Times that Pietro Forquet, Italy’s most venerated bridge master, had, during Friday’s national championships, been tested for drugs, will have stunned players the world over. Not because, as non-players might jump to conclude, bridge is the very last game in which drugs could play a significant part, but because, as every player knows, it is the very first.
What point was there in testing Signor Forquet for substances so integral to the game since the dawn of bidding that, without them, it can never properly be played at all?
Let us illustrate this with a hand played in the opening match of last weekend’s Cricklewood Championships. North, South (Mrs North), East, and West (Mrs East) have begun the evening with their narcotics of choice, large dry martinis, straight up, no twist, and have now sat down at the card table – East somewhat heavily, with the result that the table lurches, spilling their pencils on to the carpet. North, South and West glance sharply at East, who declares that the table must have a wobbly leg. West responds that it is not the table that has wobbly legs. North and South say nothing, but exchange a glance, noticeably irritating East, who suspects some tacit coded message. Each player now bends to retrieve his pencil but North, in straightening up, bangs his head on the corner of the table, to which South says Oh God, not you, too, North’s response being What do you mean not me, too, at which East intervenes with Yes, what do you mean, not him, too, and West counters with You know what she means not him, too. North in emollient reply refills everyone’s glass, deals, and opens one spade.
East passes, and South replies with I seem to have 14 cards. West says I have 11, North swears and says It’s these cards, they’re sticky, it must be the gin, and East says it’s the gin all right, and now exchanges his own tacit coded message with West. After the reshuffle, North deals, again, goes white, and, before speaking, lights a cigarette. East says those are my fags, I thought you’d given up, which South answers with, yes he has, he is nervous, he has obviously got an amazing hand. North shouts Thank you, partner, shall I just tell them what I’m holding, has a coughing fit, and opens two clubs, indicating slam potential. East passes, and South responds with You’re sweating, have you had your pill? West says What does he take, is it a beta-blocker, I didn’t think they mixed with alcohol, whereupon East replies, They don’t, it affects your judgement, he probably doesn’t have a two-club opener at all, I bid two diamonds, to which North shouts that he can’t do that, he has already passed, but East argues that he can, because South hasn’t bid yet. North now brings his fist down on the table with such force that South’s drink topples into her lap. She rushes out for a cloth, dropping her cards, face up, on to the table, thereby revealing more than enough points to have made the grand slam her partner invited.
While South is away, West pours herself another large one, and, grown consequently maudlin, stares at South’s cards until the tears begin rolling down her cheeks. East says What is it now? and West sobs I never get cards like that, I never ever get good cards, to which West responds It wouldn’t matter much if you did, and West howls What is that supposed to mean? and runs out, just as South returns, in a blouse and slacks, saying It may interest you to know that I have had to chuck that dress in the bin, it is ruined, whose deal is it, where the hell is West? In response, there is a thud and assorted tinkles from beyond the room, and, after some time, West shuffles unsteadily in. She is covere
d in earth and petals, and opens with You ought to do something about that rug, to which North responds What rug? encouraging the reply You know what bloody rug, the one that slides and could kill people, evoking South’s intervention of How can it slide, it has that big Edwardian pedestal jardinière standing on it, the one my mother left me. West says Pass. South asks East what she means by Pass, is this some convention I haven’t come across, and East responds you have now, it means there isn’t a jardinière standing on it any more, look at the state of her.
It is at this point that the distraught West gropes frantically inside her handbag, leading North, South and East to conclude that she is looking for a mirror and make-up, but West is actually engaged in a sly finesse, since what she is really after is her Valium. Before anyone can intervene, she has popped four pills, washed them down with the remaining contents of the jug, and slumped face down on the table. East deals.
85
The Long Goodbye
If I shove up the sash of my loft window tonight, for the last time, and I risk my neck with fraying sashcord, for the last time, by poking my head out, for the last time, an ear to the nocturnal hum of Cricklewood, shall I hear, above that hum, the cheery song of a cockney ghost? Why not? She is, after all, just a couple of hundred yards away, and tonight is her cue, if any night ever was, for song. True, she has been silent in her grave, in the cemetary at the corner of my road, since 1922, but what of that? I shall hear Marie Lloyd singing, even if nobody else does.
Because she will be telling me not to dilly-dally on the way. And she is right: I shall not dilly-dally long. Just long enough to tell you, who have dallied here with me over the long years, that, an hour or so ago, off went the van with my home packed in it. I, however, did not walk behind with my old cock linnet, I stayed behind with my old cock typewriter, because I wanted this empty house to echo, for the last time, to the skeletal rattle of the old Remington boneshaker which took down my first Cricklewood communique, 28 years ago. I shall not pass it to you from there, mind, because a lot has happened in 28 years and newspapers do not take typescript any more; I shall, in a bit, pocket it, and go off to my nice new house, and transcribe it onto a computer which will phone it to The Times. I am not, if you are reaching for the Kleenex, doing this out of mawkishness; I am doing it because if I just went off and did it on my computer, I could not write about being in Cricklewood, since my computer is on the van, and when it gets out of the van, in an hour or so, it will not be in Cricklewood.
All right, pluck the Kleenex: I cannot fib to you, you know me too well, I am doing this partly out of mawkishness. Anyone leaving the house in which he has spent half his life will be a mawk. Do you, by the way, know what a mawk is? It is a maggot. At least, it was when Old Norsemen were naming things, but if you were pondering why this word should gradually have turned into what it means now, stop. Especially with Marie up the road, and with me feeling, tonight, a trifle mortal, too, and furthermore, sensing around me the ghosts – though sceptics among you are welcome to call them memories – of all those who have passed temporarily through this house during those 28 years, and have now passed permanently elsewhere.
If I look down into the garden from this open window, I can see them all on the lawn, drinking, talking, eating, laughing, sniffing the roses, plucking the raspberries, peering in the pond for fish, poking in the shrubbery for cricket balls, all that. It is, of course, pitch dark down there, so you wouldn’t be able to see them, but I can. I can even see me, though it requires something of an effort to recognise him, because it is his first day in the garden: he is slim, he has hair, he has one child on his shoulders and one in his arms; a feat he would find a little tricky now, since, in a trice, both have become a mite more cumbersome.
I can hear the trees in the dark tonight, because there is a breeze. The slim hairy one garlanded with kids could not have heard them, not because there was no breeze, then, but because there were no trees, except for the giant acacia in the middle of the lawn, the focus of my eye-line for 28 years every time that, stumped, I looked up from the daily keyboard. Could be, what, a million times? Two million? A lot of stumping has gone on, up here. But all the other trees – the maple, the cedar, the cherry, the chestnut, the beech, the hawthorn, the fig, the crab apple, the eucalyptus, the thugia, the pear, the photinia – came to the garden in little tubs, and most of them are higher than this loft, now, which is why the breeze is having such sussurant fun in them. It is probably having so much fun that some of the leaves are falling, though I cannot see them, because what I can do is sniff autumn on that breeze, not the best of scents for mawkies. We should have sold the house in the spring, but the trees looked so good, and the lawn so lush, and the plants so buddie, that we thought, okay, house, one last summer.
There is only one song about Cricklewood. The wizards in the BBC archives found it for me a few years back, when I was, as so often, banging on about the place for Radio 4. Its opening couplet runs: ‘Cricklewood, Cricklewood, you stole my life away / For I was young and beautiful, but now I’m old and gray.’ Not much of a song, perhaps, hardly one for Marie, but it’ll do for me, tonight. It is time to close the typewriter and slip away. Tomorrow to fresh woods and crickles new.