All the Tea in China

by Kyril Bonfiglioli

  I would not have been able to contain myself had Mr J.’s carving not reached, at that very moment, the rich, red centre of the beef. In the event, it was not more than ten or fifteen minutes before I felt constrained to rise to my feet and beg the company’s forgiveness, saying that I had reason to think that an old friend was in grave distress. Blanche gave me a puzzled but loving look; Mrs Jorrocks was too deeply – and noisily – involved in victuals to have heard; John Jorrocks gazed at me curiously, for, when wiping my lips with the napkin, I had also cleared part of my face from perspiration with a gesture which Captain Knatchbull would certainly have recognised. There was a chinking noise under the table – Mr J. had his purse out and was proffering it to me. I smiled and shook my head.

  “I should be back within the hour, dearest,” I said to Blanche, “pray keep our guests here until I return.” With that I was off, bounding down the stairs without a thought for my digestion, seizing my hat and hailing the first four-wheeler. The owner of the “growler” had no wish to go to the India Docks but my will was stronger than his.

  Outside Dirty Annie’s there was the usual scattering of loiterers, hands deeply pocketed. As I passed a little, old, nut-brown man a dear and familiar voice said “Too proud to recognise your old mess-mate, Karli?” I scanned the line of loafers suspiciously, but no, the voice came from the old man. It was Peter; toothless, hairless, wizened and shabby but undeniably Peter.

  His smile was not the same, because of the lack of the teeth, but it was as warm as ever, and as wry.

  “You, too, have changed, Karli, but losing your puppy-fat suits you.”

  We fell into each other’s arms and I fancy we danced a little jig of delight. No one spared us a glance, for such sights are a commonplace in every great port. Then I said, lying tactfully, that I was starving and that he must come and eat with me, for dinner was on the table.

  “Not in these clothes. I mustn’t shame you before your fine friends. And, just at present, I have no others. And to tell the truth I would much prefer a drink, it keeps a fellow warm, d’you see.” It was a warm day, but I did not point that out. I hurried him away to the nearest decent tavern – that is to say, I tried to hurry him but his gait was uncertain and plunging as though the cobbles of the street were covered deep with feather mattresses. With sinking heart I recognised this gait: it is a sign of locomotor ataxia, a disease which visits those who are in the last stages of syphilis.

  The nearest tavern to the Docks was empty and dirty; the fat, blubber-lipped landlord who stood at the door had a shifty look. But I did not think that Peter could walk much further; it would have to do.

  I ordered a bottle of brandy, lemons, hot water and sugar, such as I knew he loved; also a cold fowl in its broth.

  He retched and gagged over his first glass, then his face gained a little colour – although not a colour I would like to see on my own face – and his hand was steadier when he filled the next. Little by little, between potations, I coaxed a disjointed story from him. He was in the mood to drink toasts to the most improbable people and occasions: he made me drink to long life for the odious Captain Dogg who, pistol in hand, never sleeping, had navigated the open boat like an insane genius, doling out water and biscuit in sips and bites over the countless sea-miles before they made a miraculous landfall on the south east coast of Ceylon.

  We drank to the Booby-bird which Peter had caught one dawn in his bare hands and which they had torn apart and gobbled, raw and bleeding, two mouthfuls to a man.

  We drank to the marvellous fact that large fishes, when you can catch and boat them, have eyes full of sweet, fresh water.

  We stood and drank bumpers, solemnly, to the man who had drunk seawater at midnight and died at noon, and to the old coxswain who had seen his mother walking on the burning water and had stepped over the side to meet her.

  We drank to Peter’s teeth which, he said, had been rattling loose as castanets by the end of the voyage and which he had given, one by one, to the kindly Sinhalese natives who had guided them (at the point of Captain Dogg’s pistol) across the swamps and quagmires to where a Royal Navy frigate had been lying, licking her wounds after a storm-battering.

  When I called for the next bottle the landlord thoughtfully coaxed us into the inner “snug” where, he pointed out, we could sing undisturbed by the curious crowd which had gathered about us.

  There we toasted the Second Mate, whose hair had turned pure white overnight after a tropic rainstorm. “I swear it’s true, Karli,” Peter giggled, “you could see the hair-dye all over his face and chest!”

  It was at about that time that we determined to become a little drunk. “But first,” I said owlishly, “first we must see about you, Peter, for – forgive me – you do not seem to be in good case.”

  “Pray do not fret, Karli, it’s of no importance, I assure you. The pox, d’you see, is up to my eyebrows now…” He lifted his cap and sure enough, just below the hairline there was the corona Veneris, the crown of Venus, the circlet of pustules which tells the pox-ridden that there is no hope.

  “Cheer up Karli,” he cried merrily – a merriness made hideous by his naked gums – “my navigation is still adequate; I’ll get a berth in some foreign-going bucket and that’ll see me through the rest of my allowed time.”

  I cleared my throat, frantically searching for some way of offering help.

  “Your wife … ?” I muttered.

  “Let’s drink to the bitch. Found her in bed with her lover. I offered to thrash him. He thrashed me.”

  “Your father … ?”

  “Married his nurse on his deathbed. I’m a Marquess now, the poorest and poxiest Marquess in Great Britain. Let’s drink…”

  I decided to be practical.

  “Peter,” I said firmly, “the first thing is to get you into a suit of decent clothes; you know you cannot hope to get a berth looking as you do now.”

  He glared icily, then grinned a travesty of his old mocking grin. “Of course, Karli; it would be churlish to refuse a little temporary help from an old mess-mate. But first, there is the small matter of getting drunk, you recall.”

  Later we sang a lugubrious ditty called, I think, “Here’s to the dead already – and three cheers for the next man to die.” We sang it again and again, for there was some disagreement about the tune and key.

  Later still I recall enjoying the wonderful coolness on my cheek as I rested it in a puddle of brandy, for it seemed to me that I could see Peter more clearly from that angle, you understand.

  I must have slept, for wonderful dreams came to me: I was a little, naked child again, I was being carried and rocked in strong arms; I had wet myself. All around me I could hear good Dutch voices shouting. I wept happily. As I floated to the surface of sleep I was puzzled, for the Dutch that was being shouted was not the Dutch of my native Gelderland but the harsh accents of Rotterdam; it made my head hurt. I opened my eyes to utter blackness. The shouting went on and there was a din above my head of stampings and bangings. I was sick.

  A door opened and blinding sunlight made me blink. Black against the sun I made out the shape of a huge man.

  “Get up,” said a voice I thought I had heard before.

  I rose to my feet and staggered towards the figure, rubbing my eyes and trying to focus. There was a snake-like thing dangling from its hand.

  “Where am I?” I whimpered.

  “You’re in the Rose of Boston, loading for Sydney, New South Wales. And you call me ‘Sir’,” said Lubbock.

  I gaped. The rope’s end flicked out and my groin jumped in agony.

  “Aye aye, Sir,” I said.

  Acknowledgments

  “In our trade we be all felons, more or less” (R. Kipling).

  The men from whom I have stolen most freely (in this book, I mean) are dead: Basil Lubbock who wrote The China Clippers and Robert Surtees who created the immortal John Jorrocks, M.F.H. I hope that when my time comes I shall be able to look them in the face. My thanks are du
e to Commander Hanson, R.N.(Retd) of Jersey and formerly of the China Station, who first pointed my bows in this direction. No one could write about the Treaty Coast without the aid of Maurice Colliss’s classic Foreign Mud. Commander Kemp’s Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea was published just in time to kedge me off some dangerous lee-shores. As to the rest I can only say, like the little girl who spat at Nursey, “I’m afraid that was my own invention.”

  My thanks are due to my former wife Margaret, whose patience would shame Griselda and whose loyalty certainly shames me.

  Last, I must thank all my new friends in County Cavan, whose unquestioning kindness to their new neighbour has carried me through a long, dark winter: the fact that I cannot list their names here is a measure of their number.

  Read on for an extract from the next book in the Charlie Mortdecai series:

  Don’t Point that thing at Me

  Available now in Penguin Books

  1

  So old a story, and tell it no better?

  Pippa Passes

  When you burn an old carved and gilt picture frame it makes a muted hissing noise in the grate – a sort of genteel fooh – and the gold leaf tints the flames a wonderful peacock blue-green. I was watching this effect smugly on Wednesday evening when Martland came to see me. He rang the bell three times very fast, an imperious man in a hurry. I was more or less expecting him, so when my thug Jock put his head around the door, eyebrows elaborately raised, I was able to put a certain aplomb into my ‘Wheel him in.’

  Somewhere in the trash he reads Martland has read that heavy men walk with surprising lightness and grace; as a result he trips about like a portly elf hoping to be picked up by a leprechaun. In he pranced, all silent and catlike and absurd, buttocks swaying noiselessly.

  ‘Don’t get up,’ he sneered, when he saw that I had no intention of doing so. ‘I’ll help myself, shall I?’

  Ignoring the more inviting bottles on the drinks tray, he unerringly snared the great Rodney decanter from underneath and poured himself a gross amount of what he thought would be my Taylor ’31. A score to me already, for I had filled it with Invalid Port of an unbelievable nastiness. He didn’t notice: score two to me. Of course, he is only a policeman. Perhaps ‘was’ by now.

  He lowered his massive bum into my little Régence fauteuil and smacked his lips courteously over the crimson garbage in his glass. I could almost hear him scrabbling about in his brain for a deft, light opening. His Oscar Wilde touch. Martland has only two personalities – Wilde and Eeyore. Nevertheless, he is a very cruel and dangerous policeman. Or perhaps ‘was’ – or have I said that?

  ‘My dear boy,’ he said finally, ‘such ostentation. Even your firewood is gilded now.’

  ‘An old frame,’ I said, playing it straight. ‘Thought I’d burn it.’

  ‘But such a waste. A nice Louis Seize carved frame …’

  ‘You know bloody well it isn’t a nice Louis anything frame,’ I snarled. ‘It’s a repro Chippendale trailing-vine pattern made about last week by one of those firms in the Greyhound Road. Came off a picture I bought the other day.’

  You never know what Martland knows or doesn’t know, but I felt fairly safe on the subject of antique frames: even Martland couldn’t have taken a course on them, I thought.

  ‘Would have been interesting if it had been a Louis Seize one though, you must admit; say about 50 by 110 centimetres,’ he mumbled, gazing meditatively at the last of it glowing in the grate.

  At that point my thug came in and deposited about twenty pounds of coal onto it and retired after giving Martland a civil smile. Jock’s idea of a civil smile is rolling back part of his upper lip from a long, yellow dogtooth. It frightens me.

  ‘Listen, Martland,’ I said evenly. ‘If I had lifted that Goya, or fenced it, you can’t really think that I’d bring it here in its frame, for God’s sake? And then burn the frame in my own grate? I mean, I’m not a dullard, am I?’

  He made embarrassed, protesting noises as though nothing was further from his thoughts than the princely Goya whose theft from Madrid had filled the newspapers for the past five days. He helped out the noises by flapping his hands a bit, slopping some of the alleged wine onto a nearby rug.

  ‘That,’ I said crisply, ‘is a valuable Savonnerie rug. Port is bad for it. Moreover, there is probably a priceless Old Master cunningly concealed beneath it. Port would be very bad for that.’

  He leered at me nastily, knowing that I was quite possibly telling the truth. I leered back coyly, knowing that I was telling the truth. From the shadows beyond the doorway my thug Jock was smiling his civilest smile. We were all happy to the casual eye, had there been such an eye on the premises.

  At this stage, before anyone starts to think that Martland is, or was, an ineffectual neddy, I had better fill in a bit of background. You doubtless know that, except under very extraordinary circumstances, English policemen never carry any weapon but the old Punch-and-Judy wooden truncheon. You know too that they never, never resort to physical unkindness – they dare not even spank the bottoms of little boys caught scrumping apples nowadays, for fear of assault charges and official inquiries and Amnesty International.

  You know all this for certain, because you have never heard of the Special Powers Group – SPG – which is a peculiar kind of outsider-police squad conjured up by the Home Office during a fit of fact-facing in the weeks following the Great Train Robbery. The SPG was engendered by an Order in Council and has something called a Sealed Mandate from the Home Secretary and one of his more permanent civil servants. It is said to cover five sheets of brief-paper and has to be signed afresh every three months. The burden of its song is that only the nicest and most balanced chaps are to be recruited into the SPG, but that, once in, they are to be allowed to get away with murder – to say the least – so long as they get results. There are to be no more Great Train jobs, even if this entails – perish the thought – bashing a few baddies without first standing them expensive trials. (It’s saved a fortune in dock-briefs already.) All the newspapers, even the Australian-owned sort, have made a deal with the Home Office whereby they get the stories hot from the septic tank in exchange for sieving out the firearms-and-torture bit. Charming.

  The SPG – or SOGPU as I’ve heard it called – needs have no further truck with the Civil Service except for one horrified little man in the Treasury; and its Mandate instructs – if you please instructs – Commissioners of Police to afford them ‘all administrative facilities without disciplinary obligations or clerical formalities’. The regular police love that bit, naturally. The SPG is answerable only to the Queen’s First Minister through its Procurator, who is a belted Earl and a Privy Councillor and hangs about public lavatories late at night.

  Its actual, executive head is a former colonel of paratroops who was at school with me and has the curious rank of Extra Chief Superintendent. Very able chap, name of Martland. Likes hurting people, a lot.

  He would clearly have liked to hurt me a bit there and then, in an inquiring sort of way, but Jock was hovering outside the door, belching demurely now and then to remind me that he was on call if required. Jock is a sort of anti-Jeeves: silent, resourceful, respectful even, when the mood takes him, but sort of drunk all the time, really, and fond of smashing people’s faces in. You can’t run a fine-arts business these days without a thug and Jock is one of the best in the trade. Well, you know, was.

  Having introduced Jock – his surname escapes me, I should think it would be his mother’s – I suppose I had better give a few facts about myself. I am Charlie Mortdecai. I mean, I was actually christened Charlie; I think my mother was perhaps getting at my father in some obscure way. The Mortdecai tag I am very happy with: a touch of ancientry, a hint of Jewry, a whiff of corruption – no collector can resist crossing swords with a dealer called Mortdecai, for God’s sake. I am in the prime of life, if that tells you anything, of barely average height, of sadly over-average weight and am possessed of the intriguing remai
ns of rather flashy good looks. (Sometimes, in a subdued light, and with my tummy tucked in, I could almost fancy me myself.) I like art and money and dirty jokes and drink. I am very successful. I discovered at my goodish second-rate Public School that almost anyone can win a fight if he is prepared to put his thumb into the other fellow’s eye. Most people cannot bring themselves to do it, did you know that?

  Moreover, I’m a Hon., for my daddy was Bernard, First Baron Mortdecai of Silverdale in the County Palatine of Lancaster. He was the second greatest art dealer of the century: he poisoned his life trying to overprice Duveen out of the field. He got his barony ostensibly for giving the nation a third of a million pounds’ worth of good but unsaleable art, but actually for forgetting something embarrassing he knew about someone. His memoirs are to be published after my brother’s death, say about next April, with any luck. I recommend them.

  Meanwhile, back at the Mortdecai bunkhouse, old straw boss Martland was fretting, or pretending to. He is a terrible actor, but then he is pretty terrible when he’s not acting, so it’s often difficult to tell, if you follow me.

  ‘Oh, come on, Charlie,’ he said petulantly. I gave just enough flicker of the eyebrow to indicate that we had not been at school together all that recently.