Felix in the Underworld

by John Mortimer

  Felix thought it would take too long to explain who Mirry was, and that she had sent him a note saying ‘Sorry you got yourself into such a pickle. I thought you’d like to see Ian’s latest school photo. I know who he reminds me of.’ Felix couldn’t explain why he had promoted Ian to a place on his wall. Now he got off his bunk and went over to the table. He was waking up and remembered something that might be just as important as the blue suit.

  ‘This is yours, isn’t it?’ the chaplain asked, still looking at the boy’s face.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Felix didn’t bother to ask if he meant the photograph or the child. He was searching through a list of exhibits but in a little while he forgot what he was looking for.

  ‘He looks –’ The chaplain was searching for a word and finally settled for ‘dependable’. Then he left Felix to get on as best he could without the miraculous.

  ‘I’ve got a pimple. A really disgusting spot! It’s appeared on the side of my nose and it’s a sign of the stress I’ve been put to during this book tour. I’ve been pressurized and it’s given me a pimple!’ Sandra Tantamount’s usually imperious voice had acquired a querulous note, a threatening sign that all might end in tears. Brenda heard it on her mobile phone as she crawled along with the traffic in the outer reaches of the Fulham Road. ‘You’ve got an interview at four thirty,’ she told Sandra.

  ‘Then I must rest. I must rest in peaceful and sympathetic surroundings. I know me. It’s only complete relaxation that cures my spots. Get me a suite at the Galaxy Hotel. Mention my name and they’ll give you the best. What’s the time now?’

  ‘Ten thirty. But I don’t know if they’ve got a suite.’

  ‘I told you, girl. Mention my name. Complete rest or the interview’s off’

  ‘But, Sandra, does it really matter about the spot?’

  ‘Does it matter? Of course it matters! What do you mean, does it matter?’ In Sandra Tantamount’s voice grief had given way to astonished anger.

  ‘I mean it is a radio interview. I think they want to talk to you about your shopping habits.’

  ‘Get the suite!’ Brenda held the screaming mobile away from her ear. ‘Or the jig’s off!’

  Somewhere near the Fulham football ground Brenda rang the receptionist at the Galaxy, who, being a dedicated admirer of García Márquez, knew nothing of Sandra Tantamount but was ready to reserve the suite for Llama Books. Then she dropped her phone into her handbag and lit a cigarette. She was on her way to her first meeting of the day in a block of flats near the World’s End.

  Brenda had tried ringing the flat for days but wasn’t satisfied by a phone that didn’t answer. She went to the address Felix had given her and found the lift gaping open and motionless. She climbed the stairs, past the scrawled threats to Pakis and Nig-nogs, and found a door with the screwed-on number hanging loose. She rang, knocked, and was rewarded by the sound of movement, a door closing, a light, perhaps, switched off. She put her mouth to the letter-flap and shouted, ‘I’ve got to talk to you. I’m a friend of Felix’s!’ Miriam opened the door almost at once and let her in. When Brenda had seen her at the Bath Millstream’s, she had thought of Mirry as a kind of joke. If she had noticed Felix taking her up, she’d have told him to put her down at once. Now she thought she could understand that he might, ten years ago, have fancied the pale-faced, darkly dressed woman who had risen, quite neatly, from the garish and crumpled confusion of her room.

  Brenda introduced herself with unusual formality. She was a representative of Felix Morsom’s publishers she said, and naturally they wanted to help their author in distress if they could. There were some questions they felt only Miriam Bowker could answer but Mirry, talking rapidly, was anxious to be off. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not convenient. I’m going out to lunch. I’ve got a date, actually. Someone’s invited me.’

  ‘You see, you seem to be the only person who knew them both.’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘Both Felix and the dead man Gavin Piercey.’

  ‘I’m off to Puccini’s in the King’s Road. A friend of mine invited me. You know Puccini’s, do you? It’s awfully nice there

  Mirry was making for the door but Brenda stood firmly blocking her path. ‘You see, we can’t find anyone else who really knew Gavin.’

  ‘My friend always chooses the risotto with mushrooms there. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the risotto with mushrooms. It’s really delicious.’

  ‘You knew Gavin?’

  ‘Not all that well actually . . .’

  ‘Well enough to say he was the father of your child?’

  ‘Ian’s at school,’ Mirry said as though it were a final answer to the question. ‘He keeps on with his schooling through it all. He’s doing well. That’s his report I’ve got pinned up there. It says “Works well but does not participate in group discussions.” ’

  ‘Then you changed your mind and decided Felix was his father.’

  Mirry looked at Brenda and came to a conclusion. ‘Are you Felix’s girlfriend?’ Asking the question seemed to give her momentary confidence.

  ‘Not his girlfriend. His friend.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mirry was back in confusion. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing for you to be sorry about. Why did you fix on Felix for Ian’s father?’

  ‘We worked it out and went into all the details. It had to be Felix.’

  ‘By we, you mean you and Gavin?’

  ‘Are you trying to trap me?’ Mirry did her best to sound outraged but only seemed shrill and frightened.

  ‘Why should I want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Coming here. Worse than the policemen. Asking questions.’

  ‘Did they ask if you knew Terry?’

  ‘No. No, they didn’t!’ The two women stood looking at each other, both suspicious and silent. ‘Who’s Terry, anyway?’

  ‘You must know.’

  ‘Why must I? I don’t know any Terrys. Terry’s not the sort of name my friends would have.’ Brenda said nothing and, as though afraid of the silence, Mirry added, ‘The bloke meeting me round Puccini’s is called Magnus.’

  ‘Terry Whitlock. He’s a rep like Gavin was.’

  ‘Gavin knew lots of reps. He was on the Committee. They trusted him to arrange the meetings of the Book Reps Association or whatever.’

  ‘Did Gavin go to a meeting the night he died? Was he at some sort of a piss-up at the Jane Shaw in Ludgate Circus?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m not sure where he went.’

  ‘But you said he’d asked you to meet him late that night. You said that’s why you went round to his place.’

  ‘Did I? Did I say that?’

  ‘That’s what you told the police.’

  ‘I can’t be sure what I told them.’ Mirry was looking round the room, retreating into vagueness and uncertainty.

  ‘That’s when you found Gavin dead.’

  ‘Dead,’ Mirry repeated, as though hearing the word for the first time.

  ‘So you could identify the body. It must’ve been terrible for you.’

  ‘Yes. It was terrible . . .’ Mirry said it like a frightened child, repeating a lesson she hadn’t learned properly. ‘Now, I really can’t keep Magnus waiting. He’s ever so impatient. Being in management, he’s used to punctuality. He likes people,’ she said, unaware of any ambiguity in the phrase, ‘to be dead on time.’

  ‘But you say you never heard him speak of Terry?’ Brenda was searching in her shoulder-bag. After she found a cigarette and stuck it in her mouth, she continued to burrow for her lighter.

  ‘Terry? No. Never that I remember.’

  ‘Terry and Gavin had been arrested. They were in a cell together.’

  ‘He never told me about that. Gavin never spoke about it at all.’

  ‘He only put the whole story on tape.’

  ‘Tape? I don’t know anything about a tape.’

  Brenda, who knew she was getting nowhere, saw a big box of kitchen matches among a litter of scarves, tissues, ca
ndles, mugs of cooling tea and cold coffee, Tampax boxes and a half-eaten doughnut on a paper bag. She moved to strike a match, lit her cigarette and blew out smoke. ‘Only one other thing. Felix wanted an answer to this question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did Gavin own two blue suits? And a maroon anorak?’ She looked at Mirry’s face, which had betrayed nervousness, uncertainty, vagueness and some resentment. Now what she saw was pure terror. The path to the door was clear and Mirry, in a few steps, was out and it banged shut. Brenda was left staring after her. She had seen Mirry’s hand on the door knob and, for the first time, had noticed what was on her third finger – a heavy, silvery ring with the face of a sleeping sphinx on it, something that might be brought into use as a knuckleduster.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Left alone in the chaos of the World’s End flat, Brenda smoked her cigarette and stood awhile in thought. Then she took a look at Ian’s report and discovered that he was good at English, desultory in his attempts at Science and Mathematics, and seemed to have a deep-seated dislike of physical exercise. That, she thought, figured. Over the sink she saw a photograph pinned to the wall. It was a booksigning, she thought probably in a Millstream’s shop. The author signing was undoubtedly Felix. The proud signee was, wasn’t he?, someone like the Gothic companion she had noticed in the company of Miriam, colourfully clad in Bath. Feeling that it might come in useful, she detached the picture from the wall and put it in her handbag. She had become a woman with a mission; the mission being to spring Felix from gaol by discovering the truth about Gavin Piercey’s death.

  She now wondered, particularly when in the company of the Aussie Paul, if she loved Felix or, more particularly, if she were in love with him. She couldn’t mention his name to Paul without bringing on a burst of contempt, mainly, it seemed, caused by the fact that Felix had never slept with her and yet their relationship, however described, born in signing sessions and literary lunches, had survived imprisonment and a grave criminal charge. To Paul, Felix was a wimp for not having seduced Brenda. If he had ever been permitted to try, Paul was sure, Felix would have shown himself hopeless in bed with as much knowledge of the niceties of oral sex as a Benedictine monk. Probably considerably less, the way monks carried on these days, particularly in Brisbane. And yet Brenda doubted Paul would have put up with prison with the stoicism, almost the gallantry, which Felix had shown on her visits.

  She had picked Paul up at a publisher’s cocktail party, where she behaved as ruthlessly as Don Giovanni in Accounts, who roved among the temps and made his selection, and now, like the moustached lover on the second floor, she was preparing to ditch her conquest. The business of getting Felix out of prison was going to demand her full attention. It was that task and not the progress of her author’s pimple, which filled her mind as she stood by the sofa on which Sandra Tantamount lay stretched in the darkened sitting-room of her Galaxy suite and said, ‘We’ve got a hired car to take you to West London Radio. It’s waiting by the side entrance.’

  ‘It’s not only the spot,’ Sandra Tantamount said, very near to tears. ‘It’s the sex.’

  ‘Perhaps you need a new husband? A lover? Something of that sort?’ Brenda managed to sound as detached as a nurse suggesting a different brand of laxative.

  ‘Not for me, girl!’ Sandra Tantamount coldly rejected such palliatives. ‘For my golf novel I need some entirely new ideas. I can’t do the melon bit again.’

  ‘The melon was good,’ Brenda reassured her. ‘Was that in Grand Slam?’

  ‘No, In off the Red. What’s the matter, girl? Don’t you read my books?’

  ‘Of course I read them! Terrifically good yams. Unputdownable. Compulsive page-turners.’ Brenda, who had read none of the Tantamount oeuvre, remembered the quotes from the Croydon Advertiser.

  ‘Well, then, you’ll know it’s not for me. Henry never troubles me in that sort of way. It’s for the work!’ Brenda remembered Sandra’s husband, Henry, a silent older man who wore tweeds and seemed emotionally concerned with the growing of vegetables. Seated next to Henry at a launch dinner, Brenda had learned much she had now forgotten about the cultivation of prize-winning runner beans (‘similar length is what they’re looking for’) and cucumbers (‘difficult little buggers to get straight’). She said, ‘What do you mean “for the work”?’

  ‘All those bonking sportsmen of various kinds and their managers and mistresses. Isn’t that what Llama’s going to make its money on? Well, where’s it coming from now?’

  ‘I rather imagined it came from life.’

  ‘Really, girl! What do you think I am? It was Hilary McCrindle who used to tell me about sex.’

  ‘She was a woman of some experience?’

  ‘In the Sixties, yes. She had a number of friends in the BBC. And some on the Coal Board.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that accounts for it.’

  ‘Of course she settled down and married the vicar.’

  ‘Which vicar?’

  ‘Our vicar.’ Brenda was silent, turning all this information over in her mind. Sandra said, ‘I mean the vicar where Henry and I live. Near Haslemere.’

  ‘Oh, I see. That vicar.’

  ‘But Hilary took it into her head to die on me. So where do I get my material? Tell me that, will you, girl?’

  ‘I think . . .’ Brenda looked at her watch. They were going to be late for West London Radio. Then she smiled and said, ‘I might be able to come up with someone.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘Who could possibly help with some research.’

  ‘Really?’ Sandra sat up on the sofa, awake and interested.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’ll let you know tomorrow. In the meantime . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The radio. It’s live.’

  ‘Has the spot gone?’ Sandra was still anxious. ‘I daren’t look in the mirror myself. Come on, girl. You’ve got to tell me!’

  ‘Totally cured!’ Brenda said. She was delighted to still see the pimple, plain as a pikestaff and flourishing.

  ‘What did I tell you? The relaxation did it. Now then, girl. Get moving or we’ll be late for “Teatime Rap”.’

  It was first thing – about dawn – Brenda thought – in the park. An early frost powdered the grass; the leaves had turned and were falling. A party of soldiers rode chattering under the trees and the traffic was a distant and muted roar. A white-haired couple, a man and his wife in bathing-suits, walked, shivering, towards the icy water of the Serpentine as though they were parties to a suicide pact. Brenda, in a thick sweater and shorts, was running to keep up with her Australian lover, a pursuit she was beginning to think unnecessary.

  ‘I was talking about you,’ she panted, ‘to one of my authors.

  I was telling her about your prose style.’

  ‘Lucid and yet poetic. That’s what I try for.’ Paul slowed up a little, anxious to discuss a favourite subject. ‘Whatever you may think about Wagga Wagga, it’s beautifully written.’

  ‘Just what I told her.’ When she and Paul first got together she’d driven him to the park with enthusiasm for their morning jog, delighting in what the early sunshine did for the golden hairs on his legs, laughing as she struggled to keep up. Now, all she wanted was to sit down with a cup of coffee, a cigarette and the Meteor. However, she struggled on gamely. ‘What this author needs is a sort of master class.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A class with a master, such as yourself. She has problems with repetition, her chapter endings can be terribly weak and she has absolutely no idea what to do with the semi-colon. Quite honestly, Paul, she needs help.’

  ‘She? Who is this she?’

  ‘Sandra Tantamount.’

  ‘Isn’t she a huge bestseller?’

  ‘Mega.’

  ‘And you say she needs help?’

  ‘Quite honestly she’s got into a bit of a rut. And with your teaching experience . . .’

  ‘Is it writer’s block?’

>   ‘I suppose you could call it that.’

  ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  ‘She’d love to meet you. She’s in the Galaxy Hotel.’

  Paul whistled as he ran. ‘Sounds fine by me. Is she there with some geezer? I mean a husband or something?’

  ‘Oh, no. She’s quite alone.’ Brenda thought of adding, alone with a pimple, but decided not to mention it. Instead she told Paul she had run quite far enough and she’d meet him back at the car. As she trailed her trainers through the brittle, frosted leaves she thought about the problem which concerned her most. How on earth had Gavin’s friend Miriam acquired a ring from Terry, the rep, whom she’d never met?

  When he was a boy at school Felix had never minded the work, he had just found playtime terribly hard going. Now he was growing used to his cell and he looked forward to the hour of watching television. What he dreaded was exercise. He stood in the comer of a cold yard, which was wired in like a fruit-cage with weeds growing in the cracked concrete, and tried to keep out of the way of a flying ball. Looking up to a clear blue sky he saw the white cottonwool trail of a jet off to . . . Where he wondered? Istanbul? Rome? Athens?

  Would he ever see such places again? Or only when he was old, aching, stiff-jointed, and remembered not as a writer but as a murderer? Morsom, the Bayswater killer. If his name was on the back of another book, it would be in the series of Notable British Trials.

  A cluster of young prisoners ran past him, shouting. Over their heads he saw Dumbarton towering, his arms stretched up to the sky, his fingers tipping a ball into a tom net. The young lads were cheering but Dumbarton didn’t smile. Felix couldn’t remember ever having seen him smiling. Dumbarton, the ex-soldier, who marched down the Embankment to Temple Station and killed someone, some innocent man, running down the steps to get back to his wife, his girlfriend, perhaps his children. Someone had to die, anyone would do, to avenge Esmond’s death. Had Dumbarton been at large the night Gavin died, Felix wondered, and wandering round Bayswater? Had he taken it into his head, for some obscure reason, to batter a stranger to death in a van? Was London, perhaps, full of Dumbartons, gloomily intent on random murder?