The loss of an arm was fairly serious in the circumstances. It ruled out the garrotte completely, for one thing, and made the use of the rifle damn near impossible. Which left the Luger, except that the Luger was nestling at the bottom of the convent lake, guarded by that cloistered dragon. (I hadn’t bested her, hadn’t come remotely close to besting her. Our bout of unarmed combat came to an end when I ran for my life, my broken arm hurting like hell. She’d even tried to chase me, but desperation gave me wings.) I had a variety of lethal knives, of course, but a knife wasn’t quite the thing for the sort of situation I was getting into. A handgun was certainly what was needed, but nothing on God’s earth would have persuaded me to brave the Mother Superior again.
Had Washington an East End, I wondered? A villainous quarter like that of London where you could buy things to kill off old politicians? Then it struck me like a thunderbolt. I was in the Land of the free now, a culture moulded on the myth of Billy the Kid. I didn’t need an East End or any other end. All I needed was a gun shop. In America, it was a God-given right to carry arms. A man had to protect himself against Indians, didn’t he?
Not knowing where to find a gun shop, I cruised around until I saw a policeman and asked him. He directed me without a second thought.
It proved less easy than I thought. The place was full of low-calibre hunting rifles, but when I asked for a handgun, the storekeeper sucked his teeth. He had the sort of deep, slow drawl I associate with Kentucky so I had trouble figuring out exactly what the problem was. But I had less trouble figuring out the solution. I simply took out a thick wad of dollar bills and began to count them quietly. He grinned and took me to a back room where I chose the sort of snub-nosed little revolver much favoured by television detectives (Had Bormann found nothing yet?) and though in Washington you needed a licence, the fact that it was possible to buy guns mail order made it all a bit nonsensical, as the shopkeeper agreed. (At least I think he was agreeing. Time still had not attuned my ear to his accent.) I confessed I had stupidly left my licence at home and convinced him of my honesty by adding a $25 bribe to the price of the gun. Then I bought a large supply of shells.
“Looks like you’re in for a bit of target practice this weekend.” the shopkeeper said, lapsing suddenly into comprehensible English.
“Not really - I’m just planning to assassinate General de Gaulle.”
He roared with laughter.
Outside in the car, I loaded the revolver, pushed on the safety catch and dropped it in the side pocket of my jacket. I tried to glance at my watch before remembering my left arm was in plaster. I stared at the cast stupidly until it occurred to me I’d stowed my watch away safely in my breast pocket. I fished it out to discover it was almost noon. Time was running out. Not only did I have to take care of Ivimy, the Tutankhamen General, but I also had to have a bite of lunch before my 2.30 pm appointment at the White House, I’d be damned if I was going to assassinate de Gaulle on an empty stomach.
It took me almost half an hour to find the home of General George Ivimy.
It was, as I’d suspected, a suburban villa. But to give the Yanks their due, they did these things in rather better style than London. The house was a long, low ranch type, set back off the road in a quiet tree-lined cul-de-sac. I pulled up outside, praying he might be alone. I had no worries about recognising him. How many old men do you see bandaged from head to foot?
I reached into the glove compartment and took out the package I’d bought earlier. Not the gun, which, you may remember, was in my pocket, but another package. I should like you to believe I bought it specifically for the job in hand, but for the sake of honesty I must admit such was not the case. This package contained an inflatable woman. I bought it, in a fit of wild frustration, from a late-night sex-shop in New York after Beth disappeared. The sales assistant assured me it was ‘complete in every detail’ and threw in a tube of special lubricating-cream to make it more comfortable in use. What he didn’t mention was that you needed a bicycle pump to blow it up. By the time I found an hotel and inflated the damn thing by mouth, I was too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep. And since I hadn’t sealed the valve properly, it had reverted to a crumpled heap of flesh-coloured vinyl by morning.
This time, however, I had a bicycle pump. I screwed it into the valve and a few frantic minutes later I’d been joined in the car by an excellent simulacrum of a stark-naked redhead with nylon pubic hair. I waited until the street was empty of pedestrians, then carried her out - she wasn’t very heavy - and stuffed her under the front wheels of the car with her legs poking out. Then I ran up to General Ivimy’s door and hammered furiously.
I was in luck. It was opened eventually by the General himself, bandaged as my Belvodine doctor had promised, from head to foot and using a crutch.
“Sir! Sir!” I cried. “There’s been an accident!”
A raw voice emerged from a hole in the bandages. “Are you trying to be funny, son?” Then, as he caught sight of the cast on my arm: “Jeese I’m sorry - I thought you meant me.”
“No, not my arm - there! Out there on the road!”
He followed my pointing finger. “Jesus H. Christ!” he exclaimed.
“There was nothing I could do,” I babbled. ‘I was driving along at thirty miles an hour when she ran out from behind a tree and threw herself under my car!”
“That broad’s naked,” the General said. He began to hobble down his driveway as fast as his crutch would permit. “Stark naked, by God. Was she naked when she threw herself under?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really didn’t notice.”
“What are you, son - a queer?” General George Ivimy asked me.
We reached the car together and he abandoned his crutch to sink to his bandaged knees, the better to inspect the naked woman beneath my car. After a moment, he reached out and touched her. His voice took on a note of outrage. “What the hell is this? It’s a doll!” But by then I had the snub-nosed Colt poked in his ear,
“It’s all right, General, I said quietly. “We’re going for a little ride.”
Chapter Thirteen
The doctors at the psychiatric nursing home were remarkably understanding after I’d donated £1,000 to their building fund. I explained my poor old Dad was suffering from delusions of grandeur, believing himself to be a General in the U.S. Army, then left Ivimy - minus his credentials, which were now in my wallet - to whatever therapy they might devise. He would, I knew, talk himself out eventually, but not by 3 o’clock that afternoon, which was all I needed.
Since time was tightening in on me, I had no more than a quick hamburger in the nearest MacDonald’s. But it was a substantial meal, served automatically with chips. (which, incidentally, the Americans call fries: their ‘potato chips’ are what civilised countries refer to as ‘crisps.’) Then I called in to the nearest drug store for a vast supply of bandages and a crutch. Unfortunately they didn’t stock crutches, but were able to direct me to a medical supply store that did. To my surprise, the implement cost me one cent short of $150, which may explain why you seldom see a poor cripple in the States. I drove back to my motel as fast as my broken arm would permit.
It was now 1.15 pm. I was scheduled to arrive at the White House by 2.30 pm, which meant, I estimated, leaving the motel again no later than 2.10 pm. I called the car people and told them in a warbling falsetto that Mother Superior Marie Therese would no longer be requiring chauffeured transport that day. Then I hung up and rang them back in a rumbling bass to order chauffeured transport for General Ivimy, pick-up fourteen hundred hours, chalet two-zero, Imperial Motel, destination White House, e.t.a. fourteen-thirty hours.
After which I started to put on the bandages and ran into a problem. Ivimy, bless his heart, had caught his foot in the door when he fell from his coach. As a result, he’d been dragged, face down for a distance of some fifty yards. The process cost him a
goodly portion of skin from face, hands and forearms, which explained the extensive bandaging, not to mention a severely sprained ankle, which explained the crutch. The result may have been a disaster for Ivimy, but it was a gift to me, since the extensive bandaging was the perfect disguise. Equipped with the General’s credentials - including one of his old dog tags, believe it or not - and with a checkable accident story, I considered infiltration of the White House would be simplicity itself. Unfortunately, as I quickly discovered, it is impossible to bandage yourself neatly with one hand.
I considered the problem while time raced by, then decided the emergency was sufficiently extreme to justify the risk involved in seeking help. I changed into my dark suit and dog collar, bundled the bandages into a shopping bag, and walked briskly to the next door chalet.
The door was opened by the girl in sweater and jeans who’d been disturbed earlier by my target practice with the Luger. She stared at me without enthusiasm, probably suspecting I’d come to convert her. “Hello, Father,” she said dully.
I hesitated for a moment as I went over the was-she-naked-and-was-I-negatively-hallucinating problem in my head, but decided it would be too much of a coincidence for her to be stepping out of the show twice in a row. Thus she was fully dressed and I was not hallucinating. “Bless you, my child,” I said, very much in character. “I’m sorry for disturbing you and I won’t take more than a moment of your time, but I was wondering if I might ask a favour of you?”
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“Do you think I might come in?” I didn’t want to start into long explanations on her doorstep.
“There’s no-one else here,” she said.
I stared at her. Dammit, I was supposed to be a priest and she was treating me like a potential rapist. Had she no respect for the Cloth?
After a moment, she stepped back, having presumably got the message. “It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”
It was more than a bit of a mess - it was a portable slum; which takes some doing in a motel where the staff clean every day. I gave her an ecclesiastical smile, similar in many respects to my old BBC Smoothie, but with a hint more servility and smarm behind it. “It looks lived in,” I said.
“If it’s about going to Mass...”
“No, nothing like that,” I reassured her briskly. But the question told me she was a Catholic, which was good. All Catholics suffer from guilt to some degree or another and in Catholics who haven’t been to Mass for a while, the guilt is almost terminal. In such a state, they can usually be persuaded to pawn their knickers for a priest - the reason, I suppose, why the Catholic Church goes so far out of its way to instil the guilt in the first place.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee, or something?” She was, as I think I mentioned before, a young woman. Now, at close quarters, it struck me forcibly she was very much the student type. What she was doing living in a motel I could scarcely speculate, but she had turned the chalet into a typical student den. There were books and articles of clothing all over the place, mainly sweaters and jeans of the type she was wearing. I knew that if I went into the loo, there would be underwear drying on a line strung over the bath.
But despite the chaos, she was not unattractive. Indeed, at close quarters I could see her wide mouth gave her a distinct air of smouldering sensuality. Her hair was dark, very long and very straight in the style much favoured on the typical American campus at the time and I suspected that like most female students she was a firm believer in what my generation used to call ‘free love.’
But I pushed the thought out of my mind as unworthy of one who was simulating apostolic succession. “No, thank you,” I said to the coffee. I coughed. “As you may have noticed, I have broken my arm.”
“Yes,” she said. “Look, won’t you sit down or something?”
I sat down, having moved some books off a chair, and she perched on the edge of the bed. I noticed she was avoiding eye contact. I coughed again. “Now the fact is, my child, that this afternoon I am scheduled to appear at a fancy dress charity fete -”
“Oh, do you want to borrow a dress? I’m afraid I never wear them.”
“No, nothing like that. In point of fact, I’ve already decided on my costume. I propose to go as I smiled depreciatingly. a Walking Disaster.”
“A what?”
“A Walking Disaster. It’s symbolic of the irreligious state of modern civilisation.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What I had in mind was bandages, as though I’d been in some very serious accident. Face and hands and arms and top half of the body. Like a mummy, you know.” It sounded so twitty, I wondered if she would take me for a Protestant, which, as it happens, I was, though now sadly lapsed.
But she simply nodded and murmured, “Yes, of course.”
“I have the bandages here,” I said brightly, gesturing towards the shopping bag. “But the fact is, I can’t quite manage to put them on, because of my arm. I was wondering if you might help me.” Another bright flash of the ecclesiastical smile.
“Yes, I will,” she said at once, very seriously. “But you’ll have to do something for me in return.”
“If I can. What is it?”
She looked at me intensely. “Hear my Confession, Father.”
I went cold. I didn’t know how to hear a Confession. My sole exposure to the Catholic Church was Barry Fitzgerald playing Irish priests in old movies. “Yes, of course, my child. If you’d like to come along to my church almost any day except today -” Even as I said it, I knew it wouldn’t do.
“I want you to hear it now,” she told me. “I’m in a state of sin.”
“Now?” I echoed, a la Van Rindt.
“Yes
“You mean here?”
“Yes. We can do it here, can’t we? I mean you don’t actually have to be in church to confess?”
Fearful of contradicting her, I said uncertainly, “No, not actually in church...”
“Then that’s settled,” she said with sudden enthusiasm. “When you’ve heard my Confession, I’ll bandage you up.”
At which she came across and knelt at my feet. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
She waited while I waved my arms vaguely in the air. Fortunately her bead was bowed, so she couldn’t see what I was doing. I discovered there was something intensely erotic about having a young woman kneel at your feet and wondered briefly if things would improve were she stripped. I pushed the thought aside. I had enough problems on hand for one day. Searching furiously for guidance from the old Fitzgerald movies, I prompted, “How long is it since you have been to Confession, my child.”
“Nearly three years,” she murmured.
I prayed she didn’t plan to tell me the full three years sins, otherwise de Gaulle would never get assassinated. For want of anything better to say, I said, “Go on.
“I have committed venal sins,” she told me.
It sounded interesting. “Often?” I asked curiously.
“Very often,” she told me soberly, head still firmly bowed. “I have lusted after men.”
“Men?” I asked, falling back on the trusty Van Rindt echo technique yet again.
“I seduced thirty-two male students this semester alone.”
“Did you, by God!” I had a live one here.
“And five of my professors,” she said mournfully. “I persuaded one of them to take me with the blunt end of his blackboard pointer.”
Even for a hardened old fantasist like myself, this was something else. It was beginning to look as if I’d really missed out on the Swinging Sixties. “Weren’t you frightened, my child?”
“Of God’s wrath?”
“I was thinking more of splinters.”
“Oh no - he lubricated it well with Vaseline.” Her head went down again. ‘I
was bent naked over a desk at the time.”
“Do you do this sort of thing often?”
“I can’t stop myself. That’s why I’m living here. If I stayed on campus, I’d never stop and I’ve exams coming up. Seven of the students were black and two were Chinese.” She swallowed hard. “I mention this because none of these were Catholics. The blacks were all some sort of Protestants and one of the Chinese was a Buddhist. At least I think he was a Buddhist. The other - the other - the other -” She seemed so distressed I began to wonder about international lesbianism, but when she eventually got it out, it transpired to be more American and more tame. “The other was a Communist! I’m on the Pill, which I know is a dreadful - “
“Not so much as it used to be - “ I began, but she didn’t seem to hear me.
“I once did it with three boys at once - “ I wanted to ask how, but couldn’t get the question out in time. “I once did it for a boy with another girl helping me. I once did it at a party in front of the whole crowd. I’ve tried to stop doing it, but I can’t. It runs in my family. My sisters are both the same. When we were children, we used to strip each other to amuse little boys. I once took a taxi ride and seduced the driver: I just took my clothes off in the back seat. I went to my cousin’s wedding and had it off with the groom before he left on the honeymoon. I even tried it with a very old man to see if he could manage.”
“And did he?” I asked, intrigued.
“Eventually,” she said. “And I did it with twin brothers. They were in the College football team. I’ve done it twice with other women -” I knew it! “- and I once caught myself quite fancying a dear sweet little cocker spaniel. It’s like a fire in me that won’t go out.”
My own fire was burning pretty high at this stage. I fished my watch out of my pocket, knowing even before I looked at it that fate had presented me with yet another opportunity I couldn’t snatch. “God will forgive you, my child,” I said hurriedly, then mumbled the only Latin I knew, appropriately enough, “Amo, amas, amat.” I touched her arm gently to encourage her back to her feet, resisting an almost overpowering impulse to fall upon her heavily, pull up the sweater and fondle her delicious breasts.
Madame de Gaulle's Penis Page 10
