Having finished the meal, he laid down his knife and fork, and drew the napkin across his mouth. “Though tolerance might land you in difficult situations, men are nevertheless lucky, and I am in particular, by having an occasional pleasant woman at my beck and call who comes to talk about my work. Unfortunately, suitable men aren’t very common for women, which is why so many turn for consolation to each other. When a man and woman live together and life becomes too hard it’s either time to die, or go your different ways. You might think that is the situation between my love and myself, but you’d be wrong. It’s even worse, because Mabel, by her moralising baby talk, is trying to goad me into getting up and giving her a smack across the face, so that you Michael, and you my dearest Sophie, will think what a vile cad I am for striking a woman, no matter how far provoked. She hopes, by the shock and humiliation of such a response from me, that you Sophie will despise me so deeply that you won’t come and see me again, which she knows would break my heart, though mend hers. It galls her that my gorgeous daughter has a place in my affections which is lost to her. She’s incapable of realising that my heart is big enough for both, and won’t take it into consideration because she wants to wreck my morale and stop me writing novels of which she has always disapproved, which would finish me off, something she decided to do long ago, for reasons I’ll never understand. Haven’t I loved her, nurtured her, respected her, made her life eminently worth living even when I had to chastise her because she was driving me to madness, and then only on me realising that she couldn’t live without such treatment? At one time I even wrote pornographic stories so that she could entertain herself while I was at the Latitude Club with friends she was too uppity to be seen with. Do you deny it, Mabel, my love?”
She didn’t.
“Her spiritual wellbeing has always been of vital importance to me, even more than my own, but how could I know that keeping her happy would make her want to drive me insane? And yet, in spite of everything there’s an eternal bond between us, our relationship going on like a novel that never ends.”
The only way for it to do so now was for Sophie and I to say nothing, and let him run down like a wind-up gramophone, but I couldn’t take anymore. “I wonder how it will end?” I said.
“Me? End? If I have to end I’ll stand at Heaven’s Gate with a pen in one hand and my penis in the other while ogling the angels.”
“Aren’t angels supposed to be sexless?” Sophie said.
“Much good it would do them.” He walked around the table to do what he’d intended doing all along, and I knew I’d been too optimistic in imagining that Mabel would get away with her unnecessary dressing down. Nor, I believe, had she expected to. Blaskin could exercise admirable control when in the mood, before whoever was on the end of his rage paid for his efforts at self-restraint.
Lifting her by the collar and tie, he delivered a slap at her astonished face. “Don’t ever tell me about my shortcomings before friends or family again,” he shouted. “Wait till we’re on our own, or in the bedroom where I can pump some sense into you.”
She was too shocked to cry out, at which he softened, or seemed to, though not, I was sure, from regret at what he’d done. Sophie’s expression was a cross between alarm at such violence, as if she was no stranger to it, and wonder at the privilege of being allowed to witness uninhibited warfare between man and woman.
Blaskin put an arm around Mabel’s waist, nuzzled her cheek, and led her back to the table. “There, my love, wasn’t so bad, was it, considering the terrible things you so self-indulgently said about me? Come, sit down and rejoin the family gathering.”
“You’re a beast, Gilbert.”
He turned to Sophie. “I hope that little incident didn’t shock you? If it did I’ll have to give her another.”
Such a lesson in Blaskin’s unspeakable behaviour I didn’t need, me, who would never get into the situation of having to hit a woman. It was taboo in my blood and bones, no matter what the provocation. The very notion of striking Frances would be the end of all things to our marriage. I was sure Blaskin had never smacked my mother around in their young days, a relationship which had been too short for him to think of it anyway, but if he had she would certainly have given two for his one, if not three.
You didn’t knock any woman about, so when Blaskin’s arm came back to give Mabel a further slam I gripped it firmly in mid air. “Leave her alone.”
I didn’t know who was more disappointed, he or Mabel, to go by their looks, but supposed I had stopped him only to retain the good opinion of Sophie, on the assumption that she disapproved of the goings on. I didn’t care what he and Mabel got up to alone in the flat, but I kept my hold on his wrist. “If you must, wait till we’re not here.”
He lit a cigar, and blew a perfect smoke ring towards the ceiling. “I hope you don’t think she’ll thank you for it.”
Mabel looked at me, in fact, with anguish and contempt. “You shouldn’t interfere, Michael. I can take care of myself. When I want your sort of person to take pity on me I shall ask for it. I have my pride, after all, and if you can’t see that you shouldn’t come between Gilbert and myself.”
I wondered whether Blaskin hadn’t given her a secret signal to demolish my character now. He threw back his prick-head for a donkey laugh. “Life’s hard, Michael, especially with a woman like her.”
What could I say? What more could I say? He was about to embark on another long monologue across the continent of his interior wasteland, but Mabel, a hand at her face, and standing out of range, said: “I still mean every word, Gilbert. You really must mend your ways.”
He was amiable. “How, darling? You know I love you too much ever to do such a thing. You’d soon get tired of me if I did, and you know it.”
“But there are limits,” she said, “and if you don’t soon recognise them I really shall have to leave you.”
“And where will you go?”
She looked too smug for her own safety. “I’ll live in a women’s commune.”
Sophie took my hand, and pulled me to sit down, as if the eternal to and fro arguing of Mabel and Blaskin had at last tired her out.
“I seem to be the recruiting sergeant for such organisations,” Blaskin said, “though I did think that by now they were somewhat passé. The sort of woman who runs to one of those was born hating men. She began of course by hating herself, and because it made her seem an interesting personality to some poor man, he fell in love with her. Twenty years later, when the man’s eaten up and destroyed, she comes out of the potting shed and goes to live with a woman in a commune.”
“God will strike you dead for saying that.”
He looked up from his whisky. “You mean He’s a lesbian? And yet, darling, since he may well be, I promise to do my best from now on, and mend my ways.”
Ignoring Sophie’s laugh, Mabel was about to make some response when the telephone split the air into fragments. “Answer the blasted thing,” Blaskin told her, and when she picked up the receiver a shout inside made her jump. “It’s Lord Moggerhanger, and he wants to speak to you, Michael. In no uncertain terms, he says. Oh why must all men swear?”
I was glad of an excuse to escape the atmosphere of iniquity. “Yes, sir?”
The familiar voice bounced into my ear. “Why did you purloin all those Monte Cristos from my Roller?”
I was having none of his treating me like a common thief. “Parkhurst took them. Or Jericho Jim.”
“Those jailbirds only smoke the modern equivalent of Woodbines.”
“Tell the robbing bastard to go to hell,” Blaskin yelled.
“I heard that,” Moggerhanger said. “You can inform that rubberhead that he still owes me ten thousand on my autobiography he never wrote.”
“His remark wasn’t meant for you, sir.” I had no inclination to fight on two fronts. “He’s rehearsing a play, and that’s one of the lines.
”
“And it’s about a crooked drug dealer who owns most of Soho,” Blaskin ranted, to the wrong person, I thought. “I’m calling it The Rat Trap, and it’ll run in the West End for forty years.”
“Shut up, you cunt,” I told him.
“Michael,” Moggerhanger said. “I’ve never been referred to as one of those before. Apart from it being a vile insult to the ladies, you had better watch your step.”
“I was talking to my father, Gilbert Blaskin.”
He chuckled. “That, I have to say, makes a difference.”
Blaskin was dancing with mischief. “Blind Samson in Gaza will have nothing on me when I bring his drug empire crashing down.”
My hand hadn’t gone over the mouthpiece quickly enough for Moggerhanger’s sharp ears. “The writer at your elbow,” he said, “will go a step too far some day. I know he’s one of England’s greatest novelists, and as I’m patriotic I can only applaud him for it, but if he’s not careful he’ll end up without even the wherewithall to hold a pen, except for his two left toes, which would slow him down somewhat. Tell him to shut up so that we can get down to business.”
“What business is that?” I asked.
“Don’t have anything to do with the scumbag,” came loud and clear from Blaskin.
After a silence I said again: “What did you have in mind, Lord Moggerhanger?”
“Michael, need you ask? For a start, kill him. Kill that irresponsible braggart. Go on, what are you waiting for? Now. This second. Do it now. It’s an order. Kill the swine.”
“But he’s my father.”
“So where’s the problem? If he had five pretty children and a doting wife I could understand. But if someone had told me to kill my father and promised fifty quid I’d have done it like a shot—well, perhaps two shots, just to make sure. Anyway, before he gets in another assegai shaft at my integrity all I have to say is I want you over here as soon as possible. I’ve got the job of a lifetime for you. It’s right up your street.”
Phone down, Sophie disentangled herself from Gilbert’s arms. “What was that about?”
“Nothing.” I was blazing with rage. “But I have a job to do here first.” I pulled out the gun Bill had given me in Greece, and aimed it at Blaskin’s heart from six feet away, “and it’s to murder my father. Sorry you couldn’t have had him for longer.”
Hands went up before him. “Michael, if you shoot you’ll have it on your conscience for the rest of your life, because unluckily for you they don’t hang people anymore. Oh, I already feel sorry for all your mental torment.”
I could never tell how serious he was, though I hoped for a shade of human fear. “You want to ruin my prospects, you bigoted old goat.”
Of course, he only laughed. “All right, then, kill me. Go on, release me. Do what the Germans and Italians failed to do. Feel good about it. Put me out of my misery. Do me a favour—but send me to where Mabel can’t get at me.”
The gun wasn’t loaded anyway, or I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to pull such a stunt, but at the click of the safety catch Mabel interposed herself between us. Blaskin tried to push her aside, but she was stronger than him and, I think, never happier in wanting to die for him.
“I can’t even get myself killed,” he winked, “and have one of the most interesting obituaries in literary history.”
I simulated rage. “I’ll kill you both, then.”
“Michael, you really wouldn’t send us into death hand in hand, would you? A more vindictive scheme I can’t imagine, and from my own son as well. Even though it would be useful to put in a novel I wouldn’t be here to do it.” He shook his head. “But Mabel and me together for eternity? Oh, no!”
I pulled the trigger, to hear the click and have a good laugh, but the shattering crack made a hole in the whatnot, and brought down a square foot of plaster.
I stayed only long enough to confirm that my foolishness had done no harm, then ran out for my hat and coat, cursing Bill for having left a round in the breech.
Sophie came after me, and we embraced in the lift, her eyes glistening with excitement. “Oh, what a family! I’ve never known anything like it. Passion, incest, wife beating and attempted murder! And he’s only a writer. What a day for me! What a year even! I never dreamed it would be like that. Wasn’t my mother clever to have had an affair with a man like that?”
I opened the lift door to let her out. “I wish I could say the same.”
“But he’s so lovable. I can see him whenever I’m bored.” She leaned on me, and only in the street did I get an erotic whiff of her subtle and expensive perfume. “I’m going home,” she said. “Won’t you come with me?”
“There’s nothing I’d like better, but I must report to my employer Lord Moggerhanger. I’ll see you as soon as I can, though, dear sister.”
“Oh, please do. But phone first, in case my husband’s around. Not that I expect he will be. He spends all his time with a dolly bird from the office, and he’s welcome to her, as long as he leaves me alone.”
On Sloane Street we fell into another passionate kiss, only breaking away when an audience formed, expecting us to give a live show. I took a scrap of paper from my wallet and scribbled the Upper Mayhem address, before a last hug to say goodbye.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
At four o’clock on that fateful afternoon the gates of Moggerhanger’s palisade were opened by Bill Straw. “I don’t call this late arrival showing very willing. Michael, it’s no way to hold a job down which, though not in any way pensionable, offers very fine prospects. You should have been here a couple of hours ago.”
I told him about my acquisition of a sister: “The same woman we saw on stopping off in Italy, name of Sophie.”
“I remember. Her brother Lionel was there, a very nasty sort, with his dirty vest and an earring. She looked a tasty bint, though. I’d forego a few custard tarts for a cuddle from her.”
I ignored his too dead common observation, and followed him upstairs to the flat. Sheets and blankets were folded in a neat stack at the end of both beds, a mug, knife, fork and spoon sparklingly clean on each. “You’ve made a very cushy billet,” I said. “But I’m not in the army, you know.”
“It would have done you the world of good if you had been, though for somebody who never has you’re not in bad nick. I gave the place a shine up this morning. Can’t stand fluff under the beds. Any of that, and it’s a case of jankers. Bullshit is next to godliness as far as I’m concerned.”
I lit a cigar. “Any idea what Moggerhanger wants us for?”
“Give me one of your smokes and I’ll tell you all I know.” He took his first puff as if there was the rest of the day to do it in. “This morning he asked about my military service. Now, we know he never asks anything without good reason. I told him I was in action all through the War, that I’d been in corners as tight as butchers’ shops, but my platoon was popular because I usually got the lads out without a scratch. ‘I’ve kept up my expertise as well,’ I said, laying it on thick, which is true enough. I could see how it pleased him. When he asked about you I said you hadn’t been in the army, but I’d taught you all I knew in the last fifteen years. ‘Michael’s like me,’ I said, ‘second to none, and game for anything, otherwise we wouldn’t have got out of that spot of bother in Greece, nor that argy-bargy at Spleen Manor.’”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t get like that, Michael. What’s life all about if we don’t have some excitement now and again? After that enjoyable chat with Lord Moggerhanger I went out for a hair cut. You could do with a traipse to the barber’s, as well.”
The phone rang, and he nodded at me to pick it up.
“I’m ready when you are,” Moggerhanger said.
“I’ll be down in two minutes.”
“Make it now.”
“I’ll walk as far as the kitchen with
you,” Bill said. “Mrs Blemish is a lovely woman. She’s always baking pies and cakes. She thinks the world of me.”
“You’ve already had lunch, you greedy swine. How can you eat twenty-four hours a day, and stay as thin as a rake? I don’t know how you do it.”
He paused on the stairs. “Of course I’ve had lunch. A real hot dinner it was, as well. The slices of lamb melted in my mouth, with boiled spuds, garden peas and crispy Yorkshire pudding. Then there was apple tart and custard. But I tell you, forty press-ups every morning need some feeding.”
The smashing of crockery pressed a button deep inside me that I thought no longer existed, a primeval musical noise that brought out a mixture of nihilistic delight and childish vandalism. Bill was more conventionally horrified, as we ran into the kitchen and found Mrs Blemish with hands to her face, while husband Percy was gleefully throwing pots from the drying rack onto the floor.
Bill spun him round for a clap to both sides of his face that would have knocked anybody else clean out of the world, though they brought Percy straight back into it, the swivel of his eyes stopping dead as he took in where he was: “Why does everybody hit me?” he shouted, when the painful blows got through to his senses.
Bill gave him another. “It was only me, old cock, but if I catch you disturbing Mrs Blemish again, you won’t survive.”
“But she’s my wife,” he sobbed.
Bill hit him again, knocking him down. “That’s worse.”
“Please leave him alone now,” Mrs Blemish said. “He hardly knows what he’s doing.”
“He will next time,” Bill said. “Call it shock treatment. I can’t stand seeing women hit or bullied. I’m old fashioned, I suppose, but stopping somebody tormenting a woman is my only weakness, and I happen to be proud of it.” He pulled Percy to his feet. “Won’t do it again, will you? Never, eh? If ever you want to, just imagine I’m right behind you. Or above your head like the sword of Damocles. I can be a killer when my gander’s up.” He straightened his cuffs. “I’ve never witnessed such unruly behaviour, have you, Michael?”
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