Vlachos was a broken-mouthed individual. He wore rough clothes and a rougher haircut. His manner was crestfallen. Nevertheless, he spoke up boldly. ‘I am a shepherd now. I have nothing to do with crime. Only with sheep and goats.’
‘Your ovine concerns are outside my compass. I have no faith in them, because they are discardable. You do more good for humanity to work in a garage and mend cars. Now, fellow, answer my question about the missing typewriter. Did you burn it? Did you bury it?’
‘The kidnappers came to my house, four of them,’ the youth replied. ‘They threatened to beat me up. They stole my best billy-goat and my typewriter.’
‘What of your old mother?’
‘I have no old mother.’
The Iron Jelloid looked thoughtful, and stroked his chin. ‘Not of itself any proof of guilt, maybe… But you could be lying.’
Tsouderakis said brightly, ‘So tomorrow we go back into the hills. The typewriter will help us to identify the kidnappers.’
‘I imagine that the presence of my son will help too,’ Langstreet said.
Like Sherlock Holmes, I am a master of disguise. I adopted a false moustache.
I was looking at Virginia Woolf’s essays while wondering what was going to happen next to the Langstreets. Nowadays, some of Woolf’s essays seem a little precious, a little hoity-toity. They were written three-quarters of a century ago. She was a good critic, her best critical pieces being contained in the two books of The Common Reader.
One of her pieces is entitled, ‘How Should One Read a Book?’ I turned to it eagerly, because I had hopes that Woolf would offer some advice about reading a book while wearing a false moustache. The trick is not as easy as you might think. The damned thing tickles.
It turns out that such practical matters are beneath Woolf’s notice. She says, ‘…if you open your mind as widely as possible, these signs of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other.’
While admiring what Woolf says, I cannot help wondering if my sentences twist and turn sufficiently. And, more pertinently, if I am a human being unlike any other. Does the fact that I write make me a being apart?
While I have my doubts about that, I certainly felt like a being apart when, taking Sidney Quarrell’s advice, I rented out my London flat and went to stay at a small hotel in Broadway, in the Cotswolds, for a month. Here it was that I adopted the false moustache.
I soon became extremely bored. Anyone with whom I endeavoured to have a conversation seemed to be living back in the Dark Ages of the 1930s. Although I regard myself as rather a common sort of fellow, I was convinced that Virginia Woolf would have been no happier with the company than I. Most of the women passing through the foyer of the hotel were heavily powdered, wore jodhpurs, and had rather sizeable bottoms. Their men folk wore Norfolk jackets and strutted about with their hands in their jacket pockets. Both sexes talked in loud, honking voices. One assumed they were aping a bygone aristocracy.
This factor may or may not be connected with the way in which the side tables in the lounge were stocked with copies of The Field, Horse and Hounds, and Hunting & Other Cruel Sports.
Not only was I unable to endure this arrogance; I grew tired of watching the entrance for anyone having an air of looking for convicted criminals. Much of my time was spent in my room, that cosy room with its chintz curtains decorated with horseshoes, or engaged in that most tedious of occupations, walking. There is something about fresh air which saps the creative processes. Fresh air, after all, is where all this hunting and other cruel sports are staged.
It is not environmentally friendly – or not in my environment.
I could find nothing worth reading in the little Broadway bookshop, since I did not intend to breed foxhounds, cook for twelve, or mingle with the Royal Family. In these uncongenial Cotswold surroundings, it was impossible to continue with my Cretan book although, when in London, I had been in full spate, greatly looking forward to revealing the moral of the whole story.
Suffering from the deserts of writer’s block, I struck up a conversation with the man who ran a small newsagent’s shop. Small it was; claustrophobia ruled. One wall was covered with garish magazines. Most of them specialised in one subject only – health, diet, motorcycles, yachting, sex, fashion, computers, hunting, home decor, gardens. Presumably they were consumed by my enemies, the people who did not or could not read real books.
There were, I noted, no family magazines, such as The Passing Show, which I had enjoyed as a boy. These specialised journals were produced for a fragmented society.
The owner, tucked behind his counter in his patterned cardigan, looked morose. I thought him prematurely aged, until I found he was in his late seventies.
‘I should have retired long ago,’ he said, shaking his grey head. ‘But my wife’s disabled and we’ve got her mum to look after. It’s rheumatism and lupus, mainly. I have to keep going here as long as I can.’
‘Is that very difficult? You seem cosy enough in here.’
‘I have to get up at four-thirty every morning, to get the rounds going. It’s Times and Telegraph they read, mainly, round here. It takes it out of you, day in, day out. Sometimes Trixie’s brother Gary will take over for a week in the summer – gives me a break. I take her to Weston-super-Mare. We’re friendly with a woman as keeps a boarding house there. She’s packing it in next year. Gets a lot of drunks in nowadays, she says. We’re quiet. Don’t drink. Can’t afford it.’
I nodded towards his racks of magazines.
‘At least you have plenty to read when business is slack. I see you’ve got a lot of porn magazines on your top shelf.’
‘Aye, Asian Babes and all that filth. I thought you’d get round to that, sooner or later. I can recognise your type soon as I see them coming through that door. You can tell by the moustache. No offence, of course. But they’re disgusting trash – them youngsters showing off their sexual quarters and their arseholes. They should be kept private, the way my generation used to do. Young girls of sixteen… Not a stitch on.’
‘Does it shock you?’
‘It shocks Trixie, I’ll tell you that. Tasty is the worst, she says. Two young things in the swaer-nerf position, I don’t know.’
‘Is there much demand for them?’
‘Not from locals there isn’t. Tourists buy them. This used to be a respectable town, did Broadway.’
‘I see. Well, I’ll just take this copy of Asian Babes, thanks.’
He was correct. The young ladies certainly did exhibit the things he mentioned to the public at large.
While I was lingering in Broadway, my literary agent sent me a few pounds in royalties from Wilberforce Large, my publishers, together with a few pence from Malpractice and Sims, one of my earlier publishers. There was also a note reminding me that my novel was overdue. I could not determine if Welling-Jones, my agent, was referring to the novel I was writing, the one I was intending to write, or one I had never written. Sometimes a feeling of hopelessness overcomes you.
I dropped him a postcard with a view of Broadway, asking if he thought I was mad.
Back came a note saying he had always thought it. That made me laugh.
But supposing the universe had been especially designed to make people mad. Unlikely though it seems, the human species has developed from something that mucked about in trees and fecundated its partners in trees. Although we have abandoned this latter rather tricky habit, our species has developed societies which impose maximum strain on individuals, wearing them out, disillusioning them, as speedily as possible. Questions have become unavoidable on such fraught matters as how an ape-like person is supposed to enjoy a constant sex life, or maintain a decent standard of prose, or earn a penny to keep body and soul together.
My life of exile was livened up rather unpleasantly when Sidney Quarrell’s office forwarded a letter with a film studio heading, signed by Sylvia Beltrau.
It took me a while to recall that Sylvia Beltrau was the screen name of my son Boris’ little Lucia, with whom cunnilingus, as reported, had been so pleasurable.
She’d sent me an informal and spiteful little note, warning me to expect a solicitor’s letter. The note began, ‘Dear Paedophile’, and accused me of having sex with her when she was underage. She claimed it had warped her life. She demanded recompense, and was preparing to smear my name and my face across the news journals and TV screens of the world. Not to mention the World Wide Web…
I was in what could be construed as a panic. I rang a pal of mine in London, Bernie ‘Bodger’ Smith, who wrote film biographies and knew erotic Hollywood details, such as how many lovers the exotic love goddess Hedy Lamarr had had in her lifetime (information I treasured). Despite this erudition, he seemed somewhat stumped by what I had actually been up to with young Sylvia.
‘What’s cunnilingus?’
‘It’s what a phonologist might call ‘mastering the labials’.’
After a lengthy pause, he said, in a rather guttural way, ‘I see. From the Latin, cuntius, a cunt, and lingere, to lick.’
I was impressed. Bernie had never been to university.
It turned out later that he knew this activity under the old name of ‘gamming’, from the French verb, gamaruche.
For a while, we discussed how you went about it. It occurred to me that Bernie was rather an amateur, more inclined to take head than give it.
‘Is it PC to ask her first, do you reckon?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But did you ever meet a woman who said no?’
‘What about if she’s having a period?’
‘Admittedly, that’s rather an acquired taste.’
Old Bernie liked to pose as a man about town. ‘You’re paying for this call,’ he said, ‘so I’ll tell you a joke. It’s about how to impress your lover. If you’re a man trying to impress a woman, you send her flowers, take her out shopping, buy her something expensive, write her a love letter or two – I suppose that means emails these days – more flowers, more compliments. Then you may get lucky. If you’re a woman trying to impress a man, you just turn up naked with a crate of beer.’
His laughter rattled down the phone like gunfire. I had heard the joke before.
He provided me with one of the underlying reasons why Sylvia Beltrau had chosen this moment to strike. Her new motion picture drama, Something to Behold, was about to be launched. Doubtless her thought was that a little scandal would assist promotion of the movie. What do you expect?
‘Did you really get your face in her fanny when she was sixteen?’
‘Bernie, it was all an accident. I didn’t know her age, had no idea. In any case, the organ in question was well-developed.’ I found myself repeating the description, rather lingeringly. ‘Well-developed… She insisted I went down on her. It wasn’t a moment to be asking questions exactly. I never intended to do such a thing. It just looked so inviting…’ (I set down these words of mine in good faith, believing, hoping, that the truth should be known about ourselves, however bad it is, so that we can still be accepted as a paid-up member of the human race: to admit all our folly and weakness, yet become loved, or still be loved…)
(Or if you can’t love me, show some respect. Ignore the false moustache. I was once short-listed for the Booker.)
Perhaps my pal Bodger Smith, in his light-hearted response, showed he did accept all my folly and weakness. Perhaps they were his follies and weaknesses too, revealed when he spoke again.
‘Lucky bugger! I bet you wish you could do it again, don’t you?’
I licked my lips. ‘I don’t think that way. What am I to do?’
His laughter came down the phone line. ‘You’d better make yourself scarce, old boy. Why not hide out in the Cotswolds?’
‘Damn it, I am hiding out in the Cotswolds.’
There is no doubt that paedophiles are highly unpopular in our society. One can read something to their detriment in the papers every day. I do not espouse their cause, if they have one. But if any reader has the cheek to be disgusted, I will say that we read books, fiction in particular, not only to satisfy those yearnings we know about, but also to uncover those yearnings we have hitherto concealed from ourselves.
And another thing. My dead darling, Polly Pointer, a principled woman if ever I met one, was superintendent of a children’s home. She loved me. She loved the children, and protected them. Yet she admitted to me, in one of our intimate moments, that, after she had been bathing a small boy, and was towelling him dry, his little willie perked up; it looked so inviting that she had it in her mouth before she could stop herself. She immediately pulled away and continued to dry the child. Yet the fleeting contact so disturbingly seized on a dark part of her imagination that she had to retire to her room and masturbate herself.
She never again bathed the children, but delegated the duties to underlings – supervised underlings.
Polly believed that the child in adults, even mature adults, was soothed by sucking. Sucking carried echoes of the placations of the maternal breast. Or, in some cases, of the breast’s denial. As, for instance, those who were fobbed off with a bottle and formula milk, as a substitute for the breast.
In my hideout, I sat down and composed a letter to Sylvia Beltrau, requesting her not to proceed with prosecution.
‘You may recall,’ I wrote, ‘that you were in a state of sexual excitement, and invited me to please you in the way you wished, that is to say, with my mouth to your genitals. I had no idea of your age, only that you behaved like a woman, and your womanly parts were well-developed. They were fresh, prettily shaped, prettily coloured – I recall them still – and I caught your scent. I believe you knew even at that early period of your life that few men could resist your invitation.
‘Do you make our actions public because you despise them? I hope not. Cunnilingus seems to me a loving act, an act of trust, not to be despised. I felt you melt under my lips, so that we became liquid things. I was so lost that – will this surprise you? – my erection ceased to play a part in our communication; I sought no other gratification, did I?’ (A bit of a lie, that.) ‘I could, from my privileged position, survey your mons, your body, your distant breasts which you clutched, your lovely face. In the act, I felt…my emotions were turbulent, but what I felt was nearer an act of worship than of lust.
‘I did not defile myself, I did not defile you. Please do not try to make capital out of our mutual pleasure.’
I let the letter lie about for a day. Then I tore it up.
She would never have worn it.
Well, I’d better get on with the Cretan teat story. That is one consolation about being a writer: you can always submerge yourself in a novel, and hope it has no connection with your real life.
Perhaps I will move things on a bit and cut the next episode short.
On the following morning, Nikolis Fraghiadakis arrived, smartly dressed in an impressive black car. This was the agent sent by the British Embassy in Athens, and a formidable little figure he cut. But little he certainly was, wearing high-heeled shoes to prove it. What he lacked in height, he made up in chest, and in a flamboyant manner.
He greeted Langstreet and Kathi ‘in full cognisance…’, ‘sympathetically aware…’, ‘wishing to divulge his concern…’, ‘more than delighted to give his assistance…’, and yes, he would accept a coffee – ‘plus a raki if available’ – while Langstreet, Manolis and Captain Maderakis (whose first name turned out to be Yiorgos) gave him all pertinent information on the case.
‘The latest development,’ Langstreet told him, ‘has been a renewed ransom demand, sent to our hotel in Paleohora. It contains a photograph, so the hotel informs us, of Clifford, rather amateurishly taken, which seems to show him with a black eye. The note demands half of the money – that is, half a million Deutschmarks – by tomorrow evening.’
‘We’ll round them up today, have no fear,’ said Nikolis Fraghiadakis, nodding at the Jel
loid in collusion. ‘It’s terrible that innocent tourists should suffer in this way. It is as though war is still being waged. I fear that the hatred of Germany fills ignorant minds yet. Last week, I was holidaying in a small town with a lady friend of mine. We had a pleasant room in the main square. On the morning of our first day, I heard a noise in the square. So I look out, and what do I see?’
He spread wide his hands, lapsing into the present tense.
‘I see the Wehrmacht enter into the square. They are in force. First tanks come – the good old Tiger, you know; I’m sure you remember, Mr Langstreet – following by lorries and field guns… How would you say it? Howiters? And then platoons of men, doing the goose step! And of course they have the flag with the swastika flying. I am horrified. Maybe they hid out in the White Mountains and never surrendered. So I call to my woman. She comes, takes one look, and begins to scream. The screams are very very loud. I try to stop her, for fear they might shoot from the square, you know? But she has lost her father to the Nazis when she was very young – executed before her eyes. So I have to stuff my vest in her mouth to shut her up – in her own interests, you understand. The tanks come to a halt beneath our window. I, even I, am much afraid. But the landlady of the premises, she hears the cries of my woman and up she comes, to reassure us that it is only a film being made by Director Panayiotu, a film of history. So then we feel less bad. We are safe from danger. But my weekend is spoilt because my woman has become withdrawn and frankly, I feel to myself, a little silly about it. She cannot stand the Nazi uniform, even when it is just worn by an actor.’
During this monologue, Langstreet had risen from his chair and paced about the room, arms folded over his chest.
Kathi flared up. ‘Why are you telling us this stupid story? What has it to do with the matter at hand? Surely you must see how insensitive it is! Are you trying to insult my husband?’
Fraghiadakis sat bolt upright, and expanded his chest. ‘Of course no insult. The story must be of interest to your husband, since he is German by origin, is he not?’
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