Amazing Disgrace

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  The old girl, far from acidly putting her oar in to claim joint authorship as before, just stood there beaming while the spirochaetes milled in her arm. I made an effort to blush prettily and lie gamely.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Buschfeuer. It was an honour to have the opportunity.’

  The lady golfer frowned. ‘That’s Lew, mate. There’s no Mr Buschfeuer on this ship. And there’s just one Lew.’

  Resisting an opening like that is a mature skill and I returned his compliment by praising his yacht. If ever I become super-rich I can’t imagine what I would spend my fortune on, other than ensuring that I never again write a book about anyone remotely connected with sport or popular culture. I really think it would never occur to me to own a private ship. Even a private aircraft would be less unlikely because at least that would mean my never again having to mix with the travelling public. Social emulsions are not for Gerald Samper, who is a niche creature par excellence. All the same, wealth of that sort presumably does lay one open to the envy and attention of criminals. I am still haunted by the image of poor Nanty Riah lying on the floor of his Lear jet, riddled about the rump by small-calibre bullets, watching thieves unscrew his Van Goghs. To own a private ship, though, would surely make one feel even more idiotically self-conscious. Imagine the sheer number of people needed to run it: the crew and staff whose sole duty would be to drive one person at whim about the world’s oceans. I assume that is why wealthy yacht owners always seem to travel with a retinue of admiring guests, many of whom constitute a harem. At least these sycophants must dilute the embarrassment of being all alone on the ocean in a large ship, moodily looking for pleasure. Still, fundamentally silly as these playthings are, I couldn’t help finding the Vvizz remarkable. Its flamboyant immensity and sports-shoe design somehow seemed at odds with its owner’s unimpressive physical presence.

  ‘I don’t know how much Millie has told you about me,’ Lew was saying, ‘but the sea’s in my blood. I was born to have my hand on my own tiller.’

  ‘She never mentioned that,’ I murmured.

  ‘It’s true, though. Like a lot of Aussies I was in and out of boats as soon as I could swim and I always wanted my own command. But I went into business and had some luck and you know how it is. The wealthier you become the less your time’s your own, and it was getting so that months were going by without me even being able to take a day off to go for a sail round Sydney harbour. People think being rich opens all the world’s doors, Gerry, but let me tell you it closes off just as many, especially the simple pleasures.’

  Ah, the poor wee plutocrat. My odious stepmother Laura, who worships God with a fervour worthy of a better cause, once informed me that it is easier for a camel to enter a rich man than it is for a needle to go through an eye, although it puzzled me at the time. I think she was quoting the Bible, a considerably opaque document whose text has always struck me as containing a high percentage of outpimpling and torrential ciderpresses. But she had definitely left me with the impression that life wasn’t entirely a bed of roses for the rich, and here was Lew confirming it in a way that gladdened the heart.

  ‘I guess it was Millie changed all that for me,’ he said. ‘We were two of a kind anyway, but just seeing what that lady could do with one hand made me ashamed at how much I couldn’t pull off with two.’

  ‘She’s certainly remarkably monodextrous,’ I agreed dutifully. ‘Although no matter how plucky and capable, she never could have done what she did without you, Lew. There was no way she could have afforded to build her own oceangoing yacht.’

  ‘The least I could do for her. As far as I was concerned we were shipmates from the start. Right from the moment I clapped eyes on her I wanted her hand on my tiller for the rest of my natural.’

  I couldn’t have borne much more of this but there was suddenly a welcome distraction. A mess-jacketed steward had ushered in a late arrival: a small, egg-bald young man who was advancing across the acres of green carpet with a slight limp.

  ‘Nanty!’ I cried involuntarily. Talk of the devil. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I invited him, what else?’ came Millie’s frosty voice from behind me. ‘But I didn’t realize you two knew each other.’

  ‘Hi, Mills! Hi, Gerry, long time no see! Hi, Lew mate!’ Nanty’s greetings had the extravagant familiarity of someone far too famous to be socially rebuffed, or to care if he were. I noticed that although everyone in the room had glanced around, few appeared to recognize him since tonight he had come wearing nature’s own disguise of total alopecia. Had he been wearing the blond wig he wore onstage most of those present would have known him at once as Brill, the lead singer of the boy band Alien Pie. To my certain knowledge Nanty was over thirty; but when nature takes away with one hand she sometimes gives back with the other, to the irritation of the majority from whom she only ever takes away with both. From enough feet away his face could pass for that of a teenager. Without his wig he looked for all the world like any other college kid who had shaved all his hair to piss off his parents. His exuberance and bonhomie were, I assumed, chemically induced. ‘So remind me: what’s this you’ve got going here?’ he asked, having been issued with a glass of something from a tray and raising it to Queen Neptunia. ‘A launch party?’

  ‘That’s just what it is,’ said Millie. ‘My book’s out tomorrow and I shall be sitting all day in a London bookshop signing copies. The publisher says it will be a runaway bestseller. They’re not usually wrong.’

  ‘Let’s hope John Q. Public agrees. And it’ll help keep old Gerry here in that stuff he was drinking up in that house of his in Italy. Fernet-Branca, wasn’t it? Let me tell you,’ Nanty said unnecessarily, given that nobody was trying to stop him, ‘that was just about the weirdest experience of my life. I mean, wacky or what? Blimey. UFOs disguised as helicopters, right out in the sticks up a mountain in Italy with a neighbour who was being porked by spacemen. I’ve never been so shit-scared in my life.’

  ‘Come on, Nanty, it was just a simple misunderstanding. There was a perfectly rational explanation for it all,’ I said, addressing Millie and Lew as much as my former house guest. I had never mentioned the episode to Millie and until a few minutes earlier I hadn’t the slightest idea she and Nanty even knew each other. It was not obvious to me what a one-armed yachtsperson had in common with a hairless boy-band leader other than celebrity. Maybe these days that is common denominator enough.

  ‘Nanty has turned out to be one of our most devoted supporters,’ Millie explained.

  ‘You’re a member of Neptune?’ I asked him, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

  ‘Yah, you bet. Deep blue to the centre, that’s me. Cool. Me and the boys are giving our services free in a couple of gigs to raise awareness. Gotta do something about these oceans, man.’

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Since I’d last seen him I’d managed to forget the strange mix-’n’-match ideological world he inhabited where Druidism segued into ufology which bled into New Ageism that incorporated deep ecology, any one of which might take precedence for a while depending on the guru he’d most recently met and the last psychoactive drug he’d taken. They have the attention spans of mosquitoes, these public figures, blown hither and yon by the winds of fashion, attracted as though by vagrant pheromones to alight briefly and suck up a draught of nourishing nonsense before pinging off for a different flavour elsewhere.

  ‘So welcome to the club,’ Nanty was saying to me. ‘I didn’t know you’d written this book about Millie until yesterday. Obviously you’re one of us, Gerry. That’s cool.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ chimed in Millie artlessly. ‘Gerry’s one of our greatest and most loyal admirers. Right from the beginning he was an enthusiastic convert. In fact, he insisted on adding a chapter to our book which is going to be of the greatest importance to Neptune because it explains my spiritual side. That’s the amazing thing about Gerry: his scope is so wide. He’s also a person who instinctively understands the spor
ts personality. It’s extraordinary, seeing that he’s not at all sporty himself. I mean, you only have to look at him’ (and here she gave one of her famous laughs like smashed bottles pouring down a chute). ‘Yet his insight is uncanny. I don’t know how he does it.’

  And that’s how she does it. Any reader still wondering whether I haven’t gratuitously blackened Millie’s character out of sheer malevolence ought to note this unscrupulous farrago of lies, rudeness and moral suasion. Not to mention the liberal use of the royal ‘we’.

  ‘I’m with you, Mills,’ Nanty joined in. ‘He’s just as good on musicians. Did you know we’re going to do a book together? We got interrupted, though, when I got plugged in the arse. I’ve been meaning to get the project going again.’

  ‘Not before he’s written my next book, though,’ said Millie firmly.

  Lew caught my eye. ‘That’s your future fixed, mate,’ he said with an amusement I didn’t share. ‘Nobody says no to Millie.’

  High time somebody did, I thought in a considerable snit. The worst about being praised fulsomely is that it leaves no room for setting the record straight. To have attempted to deny any of her astonishing lies would only have made me sound insincerely modest. And to add injury to insult I had been aware for the last five minutes of a recurrence of my recent medical condition that was now obliging me to stand with one hand in my pocket with a great display of relaxed casualness. Glancing about me, to my horror I caught the popeyes of Barbra or Debra or Sandra fixed on me. This was dire.

  ‘I was really shocked to hear about your accident, Nanty,’ I turned hurriedly back to him.

  ‘That was no accident, that was a carefully planned heist. Did you know the cops have got ’em?’

  ‘The robbers?’

  ‘Nah, not them. My Van Goghs, I mean. The Italians have these crack squads of fine-art detectives, right? They’re hot shit, man. I don’t know how good they are on your traditional bloodstains but give ’em a whiff of a pinched Picasso or a missing Monet and they’re onto it like a shot.’

  ‘Talking of shots and bloodstains, what about you? Are you okay again?’

  ‘Almost,’ said Nanty. ‘I’ve still got to watch how I sit down. I’ve got five holes in my bum, you know,’ he proudly informed the pre-dinner crowd around him, one of those pieces of information that really helps whet the appetite. ‘Two entry, two exit, and one dual-purpose. That one I’ve always had,’ he added gratuitously.

  ‘The bastards shot you?’ said Lew. ‘I hadn’t realized that. That’s a bummer.’

  ‘Sure was,’ said Nanty with a survivor’s casualness. ‘Cheek to cheek. Twice. I swelled up like a splitting pumpkin.’

  ‘Dinner is served,’ announced an Aboriginal major-domo, turning as he spoke and raising a hand to draw attention to a piece of theatre. The wall behind us had divided and the two halves were silently withdrawing into the bulkheads to reveal a room hung with large works of Aboriginal art. Complicated snakes and salamanders full of spots predominated. I would have bet that the artists had been smoking something pretty potent as they drew, their brushes following tradition-hallowed patterns less songlines than bonglines. In the middle of this room was a gigantic round table, fully four metres across, much of it consisting of a Chinese-style lazy Susan. This black lacquered turntable was laden with quantities of odd-coloured food, not very much of which was instantly recognizable as edible. Beside each bone-white place setting on the periphery was a name, and with dismay I saw that an effort had been made to split up the sexes: a contrived and self-conscious practice if ever there was one, as though a dinner could double as a dating service. In this prandial lottery I had drawn on my left one of Millie’s grizzled admirers who smelt strongly of dogs and gaspers. Her name was Joan Nugent. She had an anchor tattooed on her right forearm and I assumed she had once seen service as a Wren or something similar. And on my right, with remorseless inevitability, was busty old Popeye herself, revealed by her place card as Debra Leather. As the twenty-odd diners found their allotted seats, no doubt with impeccably stifled inner groans of social dismay, Debra made my own predicament clear.

  ‘Gorgeous suit,’ she said in the tone of an innocently icebreaking compliment, running her great eyes lingeringly over Blaise Prévert’s artistry.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said gruffly as I endeavoured to slide contortedly into the chair beside hers. Suddenly I had good reason to regret my choice of clothes. Monsieur Prévert’s corduroy is of exquisite softness and generously cut. Beneath it, Mr and Mrs ProWang’s joint handiwork was of exquisite hardness and by no means as tidily confined as it would have been by my trusty Stiff Lips jeans. Veal revealed, in fact. I pulled my chair forward concealingly until my midriff touched the table edge. White-clad arms insinuated themselves between the diners and left behind tall glasses of Foster’s lager. The dishes before us began to revolve slowly.

  ‘Yer jist gotta grab it as it comes,’ came Lew’s hearty admonition to his guests. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony here. If you miss what you want it’s tough titty and yer’ll jist have to wait until it comes around again and hope it’s still there. It’s a bit messy but we’re all shipmates here. We don’t hold with formality aboard Vvizz, do we, old girl?’

  I noticed he had his left hand thrust informally up under her mozzetta, presumably drawing strength from the thrilling and mysterious join where living flesh met polycarbonate.

  ‘You’ll have to be really careful not to splash that lovely corduroy, Gerry,’ Debra said. ‘I bet it shows every mark. Tuck your napkin into your shirt, I would, and sit well back. These buffet-style suppers are killers. What we all really need is a Big Diccky.’

  I nearly fainted. It took me a moment to realize she was merely referring quite harmlessly to a dickey, one of those false shirt-front things. But what malevolent fate could have put that dated phrase into her Neptune-cluttered head? As so often at critical social moments I sought refuge in food. When I had imagined myself coming aboard as Jack Lemmon’s Daphne I had not unreasonably been thinking in terms of a private dinner for three, given that I’d been summoned from London for the occasion. I had been looking forward to a down-and-dirty but amicable discussion leading to some sort of agreement between Millie, Lew and myself as to exactly what they were expecting me to write, and the point beyond which I would not go. But in the present company of popeyed groupies, smoke-cured Wrens, boy-band leaders and white-jacketed Aboriginals I felt inhibited to the point of speechlessness. Add to that a thumping woody which for all its erotic potential might itself have been made of polycarbonate, and I was physically handicapped into the bargain. In the past Samper had occasionally found himself socially disadvantaged but seldom, I thought with a hot flush of rage, had he been so helpless a prisoner of circumstances. And all for what? Just so that he could write another damn-fool book? I stabbed moodily at a plate-load of rolled undergrowth in batter that was slowly drifting by.

  ‘Don’t forget the sauce,’ the ever-solicitous Debra was urging in her Roedean tones, drawing my attention to various silver pots of hectically coloured jam. ‘Spring rolls are made to be dipped.’

  ‘I’m in the market for something a good deal sturdier than bean sprouts,’ I said, casting hungrily about for suitable fare.

  ‘The tofu will soon be coming around. Tofu’s really good for you.’

  I can be unequivocal about tofu. As far as I’m concerned, eating things you dislike because you’ve been told they’re good for you is about as silly as collecting things you’re not interested in because you’ve heard they’re a good investment. This is one of the many Laws of Samper.

  ‘I never joke about food,’ I tell her. ‘What do you suppose that khaki sludge is?’

  ‘Oh, that’s delicious, Gerry. It’s curried breadfruit from Bali. Lew always has it, it’s a favourite. Go on – take some of that saffron rice and a good dollop of breadfruit. Quick, before it goes. Hurry! Oh. Tee-hee. Bad luck.’

  It is not a dignified way to dine, frankly, this snatching passing
dishes at random from a carousel like some fairground challenge. The scene of my present disaster, whose puddled lumps on the table resembled something found under a lamppost in Piccadilly Circus after a rugby international, was pounced on and mopped up by Aboriginals before the dish was replenished with more of the same.

  ‘Go for it, mate!’ urged Lew from far away across the table. ‘Get stuck in, she’ll be apples.’

  But I was waiting for great trenchers of grilled snapper or heaps of glazed spare ribs, and it was increasingly evident that I was waiting in vain. It reminded me belatedly that I was dining in the high temple of Neptunism and it was unlikely that any living creatures would have been permitted to make the supreme sacrifice for our pleasure. Trembling alps of semolina drifted past, pursued by heaps of knobbly pulses and a clutch of what looked like exploded leeks. All fine in their subsistence-level way, but needing something pretty dramatic to lift them onto even a modest plane of gourmet pleasure. In default of fatted calves I was still hoping for squid or tuna steaks. Instead, a gigantic tuft of deepfried pubic hair swam into my ken.

  ‘Oh, this you’ve really got to try, Gerry. It’s a marvellous seaweed. I think it’s a Fijian fucus. They say, they say, it’s quite an effective aphrodisiac. Not that you’d need one, of course.’ And she actually giggled. Had she nudged me in the ribs I think I would have upended a passing tureen of strange puce broth over her blonde head and stalked out, woody or no woody, career or no career. There are limits. Not, apparently, for her though, for at that moment I felt the hand with which she wasn’t eating a Burmese bean pod begin to sidle across Blaise Prévert’s foothills, heading peakwards. Inconceivable. Nobody behaves like that outside the movies or the pulpiest fiction. I brought my thigh up smartly against the underside of the table and sensed the satisfying crunch of knuckles. She gave a little gasp and dropped her pod.