The Mortdecai Trilogy

by Bonfiglioli, Kyril

  ‘Naturarry,’ I said bravely.

  ‘The ten dorrars would be for you to give to some indigent passerby who would help you to a convenient part of the rairway-bridge: you would be anxious for such help by then, you understand.’

  I pulled myself together, remembering that I was, after all, partly British. We British do not cringe in the presence of the heathen, nor are we daunted by foreign threats. (Well, all right, Suez was a special case, wasn’t it?)

  ‘Mr Ree,’ I said, as crisply as the words allowed, ‘pray tell me something. Is it true that Chinese, ah, persons, consider themselves to be constipated if they do not achieve at least two motions of the bowels each weekday? I have read this somewhere and I long to know whether it be true.’ He considered this for quite half a minute, looking as nonplussed as his inscrutability would permit.

  ‘Yes,’ he said after the stated half-minute, ‘yes, this is true. But I cannot see why you should ask such a thing. Are there not matters of almost equal importance … ?’

  ‘I ask,’ I said, maintaining the British crispness, ‘because I fear for your health. It seems to me that a good deal of surplus, ah, effluent has been escaping from your mouth during the past few minutes. Your digestive tract seems to have lost all sense of direction. In short, if you will forgive me, I begin to find your talk tedious.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘On the other hand,’ I continued, ‘your points are well taken; indeed I have been in accord with you for some ten minutes. If you will now tell me, in your own words, as much of the truth as your masters have empowered you to tell, then you may depend upon it that I shall impart it to no one. First, I am a man of my word. Second, I am not brave.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said again. ‘But, Mr Mortdecai, our dossier on you must be at fault, for it states that you can lie like a prostitute and are capable of quite absurd bravery on occasion. But it also says that you are sensible, a virtue often mistaken for cowardice.’

  I looked at my watch and stifled a well-bred yawn.

  ‘Mr Ree,’ I said, ‘you have frightened me, as you intended. This was unnecessary for I was already frightened. Your dossier is right in one respect: I am sensible. Tell me some of the truth. We both know that you can and will kill me later if you decide to do so – and unless I contrive to kill you first, which has no part in my plans at present. Meanwhile, perhaps I might have just a touch more of that delicious malt whisky? And enough plausible facts to persuade me to part with the toothpowder, eh?’

  How brave I was, to be sure. Mr Ree passed me a Kleenex. I mopped the sweat off my forehead. He began to utter.

  ‘Your wife is Johanna Mortdecai,’ he told me. Well, I knew that, of course, but I wasn’t about to walk into any straight-line situations; I didn’t even nod.

  ‘She is the chief financier – forgive me, financière? – of the Women’s Domination Society; arso, Deputy Head of it.’

  ‘You mean Women’s Liberation, don’t you?’ I said in the embarrassed tones one uses to foreigners who get words wrong.

  ‘No, Mr Mortdecai. Women’s Riberation is a piece of sirriness which was froated to, ah, test the temperature of the water and to mask the rear movement. It was instructive to see how many sirry women were prepared to, shall we say, cut off their bras to spite their breasts.’ He had made a joke. I smiled, not showing the teeth. ‘Quite agree,’ I said. ‘I mean, if God hadn’t meant us to wear trusses, he wouldn’t have given us ruptures, would he?’ He didn’t smile.

  ‘The Women’s Domination Society is very serious. It is probabry the richest private organization in the world; even richer than the Parestinian Popurar Front – with whom they happen to be friends.’ I was about to say something valiant about how little I cared for the riches and murderous capacity of the PFLP when I recalled that, some forty years ago, I had promised an aged aunt never to tell a lie. (This was in exchange for a tin of Mackintosh’s Quality Street Toffee Selection. Those toffees are long gone – nor would I find them toothsome in this my middle age – but a Mortdecai’s promise, even to an aunt, is not to be paltered with.) So I held my tongue.

  ‘They intend,’ continued Mr Lee, ‘to assume controh of the world.’ I gave him that look – often practised before the mirror – which I give to players at stud poker who back into the betting on the fourth card. He was unimpressed.

  ‘How can they not win?’ he asked. ‘First, the terrifying American middre-aged woman controhs quite three-fifths of the wealth of the richest country in the world. Second, the women “behind the curtain” – in the harems of the Musrim world – controh wealth which even Zurich could not count. Third, the female interrectuals of Israel and India have their poriticah worlds by the, ah, borrocks. Fourth, women have the insensate drive of the castration comprex; the same knowledge of inferiority which makes rittre men into tyrants. Arexander the Great was incapable with women; Attira the Hun died trying to achieve an erection; Naporeon had an absurdry small penis (36mm – it was sold at Sotheby’s a few years ago) and Adorf Hitrer, as all the world knows, had onry one testicre.’

  I shifted uneasily in my chair; he was talking the kind of lunacy which often makes better sense than sense does. Also, I was frantically trying to convert mirrimetres into inches – feet? – in my head.

  ‘Fifth,’ he said, spreading his beautifully-tapered fingers on the desk, ‘who is to oppose them? Is there one state – other than China – which is not rotten from top to bottom? Can you name one poritician in office who is a strong man – a statesman?’

  This was not a rhetorical question; he paused to give me time to answer. I took that time.

  ‘No,’ is what I finally said. He nodded a few mirrimetres.

  ‘Sixth and last, they have friends, as I have said. Most of all, they have us.’

  ‘Who are “us”?’

  ‘Issyvoo.’

  I boggled as I had never boggled in my life before. ‘Issyvoo,’ surely, was what the Berliners used to call Christopher Isherwood, the man who will go down to fame as the chap who made the joke about ‘the last of the small Spenders’. I allowed myself to raise an eyebrow. He spelled it out for me.

  ‘ICWU. The International Chinese Waiters Union. No, prease do not raugh. Our union – we do not call it that but you would not be interested in its reah name – is the only trury internationah organization in the world. Arso, it is the only Union with no absurd poritical affiriations. Arso, it is the onry Union where the emproyers are equah members with the emproyees. They have to be. Most important of all, it is the only union which has no trouble with brackregs. Such people are given one hour in which to understand that the union is their mother and father. The crever ones understand this in much ress than one hour. The stupid ones; we send a present of money to their families – and a souvenir.’

  ‘Like, say, an ear?’ I ventured.

  ‘Something of that sort, yes. But annoyances of that kind do not often happen nowadays. We Chinese, as the world knows, are inveterate gambrers; when you go to your favourite Chinese restaurant and find that it has changed hands it arways means that the owner has lost it at the gaining table.’

  ‘I knew that,’ I said.

  ‘The new owner is onry a manager, you understand. He now owes the union a great deah of money, as do all the waiters, according to their station in rife. You understand that all this calls for heavy financing, far more than the union dues can suppry. Your charming rady wife suppries this through her organization. Partry by supporting our cash-flow, partry through making avairable her capable young radies as couriers so that we can, ah, adjust the supply of medicines internationarry. I think that is all you need to know, ah?’

  ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all … ye need to know,,’ I said, dipping deep into the Grecian Urn.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Keats.’

  ‘Kits?’

  ‘Yes – it means little pussies.’

  ‘Ah. I can arrange … ’

  ‘Please do not go to any such tro
uble; I was simply accepting that I had been given what information you were permitted to give me.’

  ‘I have been frank with you, Mr Mortdecai. You bereave that, I hope.’

  ‘Of course. Santa Claus lives. You shall have your icing sugar. Meet me in Washington tomorrow?’

  17 Charlie passes on some perilous groceries and receives a zonk with less than his habitual meekness

  Man with the head and woman with the heart:

  Man to command and woman to obey;

  All else confusion.

  The Princess

  ‘What-ho, Charlie!’ cried Humphrey as I was ushered in to his tastefully-decorated sanctum or office in the Embassy next day.

  ‘What-ho, what-ho, Humpers!’ I retorted courteously. We swapped a few more civilities, freely using the useful phrase ‘what-ho’. It saves one thinking, you see, and saves one the chore of trying to remember whether the other chap is married, divorced, queer or whatever. Best of all, it saves one from the peril of asking after the chap’s parents. Humphrey, you see, is the scion of a pretty antique Irish family, which means that at least one of his nearest and dearest is chained up in a cellar, living on dry bread and biting the heads off rats for pastime.

  Moreover, this what-hoing gave Humphrey the opportunity to draw from his pocket a calling-card upon which, neatly typed, were the words THIS PLACE IS BUGGED. I nodded vigorously in what he probably thought was comprehension but which I intended as agreement; guilty knowledge if you like.

  ‘Too early for a drink, I suppose?’ he asked, glancing at his watch.

  ‘On the contrary, damn’ nearly too late,’ I said, glancing needlessly at mine. ‘Wheel on the life-giving fluids without delay.’ He went to a cupboard, unlocked it and drew out the two fat envelopes I had sent him, raising his eyebrows and saying, ‘Scotch or Bourbon?’

  ‘Both,’ I quipped merrily.

  ‘Greedy sod,’ he laughed, handing me both packages, followed by a huge brandy and soda which was, in fact, what he knew I would be needing at that time of day. (These chaps don’t get into Intelligence merely on charm; never mind what the after-shave manufacturers say.)

  We Woostered away for a while, giggling silently at the thought of grim-jawed FBI men and beetle-browed CIA men frantically sending out ‘Code Orange-Five Trace Orders’ on such ornaments of the Drones Club as Ooffy Prosser and Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps. (Indeed, one hopes that they took ‘Drones Club’ to be the code name for ‘The Firm’s’ new London ‘safe-house’ – and, who knows, it may well be for all I know.)

  While we idly bandied these Woosterisms – and he and I are confirmed bandiers of such things – he slid a scribbling-pad across the desk and I scribbled on it enough news to pay him richly for his kindness. To be exact, I wrote down everything I knew that I knew Colonel Blucher knew, if I make myself clear, together with a couple of other snippets which would put him ahead of the game and give him something to trade with Blucher. I selected with care a few bits to omit: he wouldn’t have believed them and, in any case, they concerned my personal safety. (‘Idle, intelligent, devious; a survivor,’ read the summary of my character on my last school report and I have not changed; I am no butterfly.)

  After another invigorating suck at the brandy-tit we parted with many a friendly message to Freddie Widgeon and Honoria Glossop. As he courteously ushered me to the door he paused beside what he no doubt knew to be a well-bugged standard lamp and whispered hoarsely, ‘Charlie, don’t believe a word old Mulliner says.’ I gasped but mumbled assent, grinning inaudibly.

  Mr Ree was waiting at the rendezvous as advertised, staring politely into space like a man doing long-division sums in his head. Or working out a fool-proof way of murdering his wife. He offered me a drink but his heart was evidently not in the offer and I, too, was more anxious to do business than to quaff. Frankly, I would rather carry an Irish-made time-bomb around the streets than a package of heroin. If that’s what it was.

  We walked around the block to a spot chosen by Mr Ree where he was sure that we could not be overseen by stupid, bumbling, British Intelligence blokes. (It will be a sad day for the world when the Oriental gent realizes that Western bumbling is only Eastern guile in a different idiom. Well, a lot of it, anyway.) We sidled into an entry. He opened a capacious briefcase. I slipped a fat envelope into it. He gave me a fraction of a bow and a long, steady look before popping into a large, vulgar, black limousine which had been idling beside a fire-plug under the indulgent eye of a well-paid policeman. I did not much relish the long, steady look from Mr Ree; it was the sort of look which seems to say, ‘Mortdecai, this stuff had better be what it’s supposed to be: we have ways of making you scream.’ I waved a nonchalant hand, confident that the churning acid in my stomach could not be seen by the naked eye. Then I studied the scrap of paper he had pressed into my hand. It was not, as I hoped, a munificent piece of walking-about money: it was better, much better. It read ‘MESSAGE FROM WIFE BEGINS QUARTZ-DECAY IMPLANT JUST A JOKE COMMA FEAR NOT COMMA PLEASE DONT BE CROSS LOVE HANNA STOP ENDS.’

  ‘Stop ends indeed,’ I snarled.

  Before the limousine was out of eyeshot another, even more vulgar black limousine swept up to the kerb – just like they do in the story-books. I gave it no more than a brief and haughty glance whilst I made taxi-attracting gestures to passing taxis. The taxi-drivers did not seem to understand my British gestures. Just as my fears were changing into honest British annoyance, I became aware that respectable-looking chaps were issuing from the limousine – the second, longer, more vulgar limousine, you understand. I recked not of them but continued to beckon imperiously at passing taxi-cabs. It was at that point that I was zonked on the back of the head.

  Now you who – forgive me – have nothing better to do than read such tales of daring and true love as this which I now relate, must have read many a description of what it feels like to be zonked on the occiput. Stars burst wondrously, blue-birds twitter, fireworks effulge, bells chime and so forth. None of this is true; none has been written by chaps who have actually experienced such a zonk.

  Speaking as one who has in his time received not one or two but several such cowardly buffets, I am in a position to record the resultant phenomena in scientific form, such as any serious medical journal would gladly accept for publication.

  (A) The subject feels a distinct zonking sensation at the rear of he bonce or cranium. A momentary agony is experienced.

  (B) This causes the novice to say ‘Aaargh!’ or words to that effect, according to his ethnic group. The seasoned chap, who is no stranger to zonks, subsides quietly, lest he receive just such another.

  (C) The subject then sinks into an untroubled sleep, more dreamless than he has known since puberty.

  (D) He awakes, reluctantly, to find himself infested with a shattering headache and a great thirst. Moreover, he is surrounded by large, ugly men who view his awakening coldly, for they are engrossed in a game called three-handed pinochle. He goes back to sleep. It is now but a fitful sleep.

  (E) He is awakened again, this time by one of the coarse, ugly men and in a fashion so coarse that I cannot describe it in a narrative intended for family reading.

  (F) Full, now, of indignation, piss-and-vinegar, etc, he launches a death-dealing karate-chop at his tormentor, not realizing how enervating have been the effects of the professional zonk. The d.-dealing k.-chop misses by several feeble inches. The ugly chap does not even smile: he smacks the patient across the chops with a spade-like hand, back and forth and to and fro. In Brooklyn I understand this is rendered as ‘whackity-whap, biff, zap’.

  (G) Weeping bitterly with shame and rage, the subject collapses onto the carpet. The ugly chap raises him compassionately to his feet by grabbing a handful of hair.

  All these things happened to me in the order named and I have a couple of neuroses to prove it. I was taken to a lavatory or toilet – no wait, it’s called a bathroom in the USA – and was allowed to be sick, wash my face and, as my grandmother would say, ‘s
traighten my veil’. (In my will I have bequeathed my collection of euphemisms to the National Trust.)

  I felt a little better but my indignation was lessened by no whit. I am assured that there is many a chap who accepts a slosh on the brain-pan with equanimity. Some, I daresay, positively welcome such wallops as aids to meditation; others reproach themselves for not having loved their fellow-men enough. I was never such a one. Being coshed or sapped never fails to fill me with a quite irrational annoyance. We overweight cowards in early middle age have few inexpensive recreations left to us: indignant rage – so long as one’s blood-pressure is no worse than 120/80 – is both cheap and satisfying.

  It was, then, a furious and unforgiving Mortdecai whose face was wiped and whose trousers were adjusted by large, ugly men and who was half-carried into a darkened room and dumped into a wonderfully comfortable chair. He – I – raged vaguely and luxuriously for a minute or two until sleep slunk up like a black panther and sank its kindly fangs into what remained of the Mortdecai brain. Curiously delicious dreams involving over-ripe schoolgirls ensued – quite unsuitable for these chaste pages. (It has often been remarked that men about to face death on the field of battle or, indeed, the very gallows itself, frantically seek solace in the sexual act. The same is true of the common hangover: a raw egg beaten up in Worcester Sauce or Tabasco is a useful placebo for the hung-over novice; a pint of flat and tepid ale is a kill-or-cure specific/emetic for those with leathern stomachs, while a brace of large brandies marks out your seasoned boozer who knows that he needs an empiric to get him back into the human race as quickly as may be. You may depend upon it, however, that the only sovereign cure for us men of iron is a brisk five minutes of what Jock coarsely calls ‘rumpy-pumpy’. It is positively warranted to scour the cobwebs from the most infested skull; no home should be without it. Try some tomorrow. I shan’t pretend that you can buy it at all reputable chemists but you will find a registry office in most large towns. I digress, I know, but usefully: these words of mine alone are worth the price of admission.)