Dunster

by John Mortimer

  ‘Sir Crispin Bellhanger,’ the article continued, ‘is nothing more nor less than a war criminal who, after half a century on the run, has at last had his collar fingered.

  ‘The vital witnesses in the forthcoming trial,’ the writer went on, are old soldiers and no doubt the powers that be will try every possible means of silencing them or persuading them not to grass on such a prominent member of the old boy net. The pressure on witnesses, so the word goes in legal circles, is being applied by Sir Crispin’s confidential assistant, a shadowy accountant named Philip Progmire, who, although an enthusiastic amateur actor in his spare time, shuns the limelight in his professional life. His personality is said to be so negative that one Megapolis executive mentioned that his colleagues often start confidential conversations before they have noticed that Progmire has, in his unobtrusive fashion, “slithered into the room”. He recently visited a retired army officer who was to be an important witness for Dunster’s defence, travelling all the way down to the West Country to do so. Speculation is rife as to what was said on this occasion, but the hard fact is that this tough old campaigner, ex-desert rat and hero of the SAS, was so alarmed by what the devious Progmire had to tell him that he suffered a stroke and may now be incapable of giving evidence for either party. All of which only goes to show that when it comes to behind-the-scenes manipulation, the “great and good” have fewer holds barred than any of us.’

  Lucy, sitting beside me and holding a pint of beer that seemed too heavy for her thin arm, said, ‘You’re jolly lucky.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve been libelled too. You ought to be able to collect some wonderful tax-free damages from the Informer Who wrote it? – Laurence Anderson Ertes. What an extraordinary name. Do you know him?’

  ‘Well, I think I might.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Usually known by his first two initials. L. A. Ertes.’

  She shook her head slowly, not understanding, and took a gulp of beer.

  ‘Laertes,’ I told her ‘Although he never played the part. There was talk of offering it to him.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’

  ‘Of course. It takes a close friend to write stuff like that about a person.’

  Curiously enough I didn’t feel hurt or worried or even particularly angry. Being angry with Dunster, in any event, seemed as futile as raging at the rain that fell each day when it was meant to be summer, or yelling curses at the traffic in the Commercial Road all the way to work, or railing at the fact of death. In a way I was proud of being identified with Cris, and coming in for this attack made me feel that I had atoned, to some extent, for my negligence in not taking a signed statement from Jaunty Blair before the great silence descended on him.

  We had a calm conference in Justin Glover’s office. Robbie Skeffington had written an opinion saying that we should issue another writ against the Informer. Cris, of course, was all for moderation. He said the Informer had a very small circulation and was hardly worth powder and shot. I had absolutely no desire to sue anyone or be involved personally in what seemed to me the horrors of litigation. In the end we decided that Justin would write a letter to the Informer denying any interference with witnesses and threatening immediate proceedings if any repetition of such a suggestion were to take place. I left the conference glad that Cris felt in a strong enough position to exercise such restraint. It was true that our principal witness, the one who might well have won the case, was now lost to us, such was the unsuccessful result of my so-called interference. But as Theodora’s ear had cleared up nicely, Justin promised to devote all his energy and resources to the search for an Austrian refugee who was now a Mr Llewellyn, running a garage outside Cardiff. This was the war criminal who, as I now knew, had ordered the massacre at Pomeriggio. As for Dunster, it seemed that he had fired yet another random volley into the air and had wounded no one

  Then I got a handsomely embossed card telling me that Marguerite Oakshott would be At Home from 6.30 p.m. onwards on Thursday week. On the back was scrawled in green ink: ‘Do try to come, and bring a friend. It’s been centuries. M.’

  I don’t know how most men feel about their first experience of sex. I can imagine one of those articles in the Mr Chatterbox column of the Sunday Fortress in which various famous persons are rung up and asked to describe this particular incident in their lives. There would be little photographs of footballers, novelists and, probably by now, cabinet ministers (it’ll soon be bishops) who would say: ‘How can I ever forget that time in the bicycle sheds, or in the long grass, or when we broke into the cricket pavilion, or in the front room by the Christmas tree when her parents were asleep upstairs – when I felt terrified, or liberated, or completely inadequate, and when Red Annie from the check-out, or whoever it might have been, was so wonderfully understanding?’ Such people would no doubt leave us to think that so modest and wryly described an initiation had led to a long line of successes which had helped them in their ambition to become stars of the Mr Chatterbox column. One thing I’m sure about is that none of these famous persons, however distinguished, thinks of the first woman who ever made him completely welcome without some degree of gratitude and she will never be forgotten.

  I have already made it clear that I am not particularly proud of my seduction by Mrs Oakshott in her pale pink Gloucester Crescent bathroom, but, looking back on it after so many years, I feel that, on the whole, it was kind of her to take the trouble – especially on a busy night when she had a house full of guests.

  Lucy said, ‘Who is this Marguerite Oakshott?’

  ‘A strange sort of woman. Rich and supposed to be left-wing. She’s got an original Dufy. Her parties were quite interesting, I seem to remember. It might be fun to go.’

  ‘I suppose it could take your mind off this great libel action.’

  But, as it so happened, it didn’t take my mind off that at all.

  The house was familiar, but not so Mrs Oakshott. Who was this charming, totally respectable, grey-haired lady in her sixties who greeted me as though she were a devoted auntie, welcoming her favourite nephew home from a long spell in the tropics? She had fought no battle against time, surrendering her neck to loose skin and her eyes to wrinkles, but she still smelt of sweet powder, her breasts were still plump and her ankles slender. She still leant back on her heels and tried to look down on us – an exercise which her shortness made impossible – but now she was peering through thick-rimmed spectacles. I thought her acceptance of old age creditable, although it made me feel as though I had lost my virginity an alarmingly long time ago.

  She kissed me and said, ‘Great to have you back at one of my parties. And who’s this you’ve got hold of?’

  ‘Lucy Cattermole,’ I told her.

  ‘Sweet. Really very sweet and, I should have thought, rather suitable. It’s time you settled down. I want to get all the dirt from you about this great war crimes trial, now you’ve become so famous! Are you really the éminence grise of Crispin Bellhanger? And don’t you think he must have done something?’

  ‘I’m quite sure he didn’t,’ I said. ‘And I’m not in the least famous.’

  ‘He was always so modest, even when he was a child,’ Mrs Oakshott, who sounded as though she had kept in close touch with me all my life, told Lucy. ‘Didn’t you read all about him in the Informer?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s thinking of suing them.’

  ‘How tremendously exciting! You must tell me everything that’s been happening to you. Now we’ve found you again.’

  ‘I was wondering how you managed that?’ I was a long way from buying the house in Muswell Hill on the night that Mrs Oakshott and I met on the bathroom floor.

  ‘That friend of yours ...’ she said, peering vaguely past me at some new arrivals. ‘Oh, my God! Did I invite them?’

  When she had left us Lucy said, ‘Is she related to you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it some time. Let’s go and find a drink, for God’s sake. W
e needn’t stay long.’

  The place was full of those people that any girl journalist working on the Mr Chatterbox column would have rung up to ask not only about their first sexual experience but about their ten best books, their favourite films, the way they spent Sundays, what they thought of a common European currency, where they took their holidays and what they customarily had for breakfast. Their faces were either well known from newspapers or television, or vaguely and maddeningly familiar, like the people who come and greet you and know all about you but whose names you have forgotten. They looked, these well-nourished, smiling men and younger – but not quite so young as they would like to be – women, as if they were all closely related. They were like a family, all the members of which were bored with each other, had grown to hate each other and yet had to go on meeting, on and on, because every evening was yet another family reunion at the opera, or some embassy or other – or at Mrs Oakshott’s because she was rich and knew them all, even though they might not have recognized her husband who was quite uninteresting and worked for a bank. And I thought how desperately they hoped to meet someone new, anybody who would tell them things they hadn’t heard before, even someone like me, whose claim to fame was having played a few leading roles with the Muswell Hill Mummers and having been mentioned, in an extremely unfavourable manner, in that week’s Informer.

  I also knew that Cris’s reputation would be totally unsafe in their hands. The story of the Pomeriggio massacre had come to them like an extra treat in a dull season, a promise of something more dramatic than federal Europe, or a Cabinet reshuffle, to speculate about and get to know its inside story. But just as unsuccessful plays and bad books and disastrous marriages provided more pleasurable conversation – and were easier to make jokes about – than hits, or masterpieces, or people who lived happily together, so the great libel action would only be interesting if Cris were guilty. For that reason he already was guilty for them, because there was never any smoke without a fire, and because once something terrible had been suggested, or written about in a newspaper, it had better be true as life would become so very dull if it weren’t. I felt a stab of pity for Cris, who was going about his business and home to Windhammer, caring for Angie and listening to Schubert, in the belief that the case in court would decide things one way or another, when this laughing, champagne-drinking, canapé-eating tribunal had decided that he was already guilty as rumoured.

  As we stood holding our glasses, Lucy looked round and whispered the names of the faces she recognized. She then covered her mouth with a flat hand, like a child suppressing a giggle, as she recognized an extremely distinguished-looking elderly gentleman whom her firm had defended on a serious fraud charge at the Old Bailey. ‘I sat in court for three weeks with him, but he won’t recognize me. Our litigation partner says clients never do.’ Then a penetrating girl’s voice squealed, ‘Lucy Cattermole! I can’t believe it!’ and there was someone called Amanda with whom Lucy had been at school and who had come with her dad. As they went on a brief trip down memory lane I started on the familiar journey to Mrs Oakshott’s bathroom.

  There were couples sitting on the stairs and the front door kept opening to admit more guests. I had obviously been invited to one of the Oakshotts’ more all-embracing parties. Of course I had more than half expected, almost known, that Dunster would be there. Perhaps I thought he would be there with Beth and I wanted to prove something to both of them. I wanted to show her that Lucy and I were now a couple, an item, and getting on perfectly well, thank you. And I wanted to show Dunster that he had drawn no blood at all, that his most vicious lunge, designed as a rapier to the heart, hadn’t even grazed the skin. The suggestions in his article were so absurd they could only produce laughter, not pain. Perhaps it was childish of me to wish for this demonstration but it was at least part of the reason for accepting Mrs Oakshott’s invitation.

  The pink bathroom revisited produced no sort of drama. As I left it there had been another intake of new arrivals and an all-too-familiar voice called up from the hall, ‘There you are, old man! I thought you might be here.’ He came bounding eagerly upstairs towards me. I waited for him on the landing, not wanting to talk to Dunster in the middle of the party.

  I told him his latest article was the most ludicrous in a long line of absurdities.

  ‘My article? Bright of you, old man. You saw through my little joke.’

  ‘It wasn’t hard. And it wasn’t tremendously funny either.’

  ‘You spotted me as Laertes.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You’re nothing like Laertes.’

  ‘Don’t you think so?’

  … I, with wings as swift

  As meditation or the thoughts of love.

  May sweep to my revenge.’

  Dunster didn’t often quote poetry.

  ‘Laertes didn’t say that. Hamlet said it.’

  Two women, look-alikes, red glossy lips and white breasts crammed into black cocktail dresses, came towards us arm in arm and one said, ‘Are you two guarding the door or something?’

  We moved aside to let them into the bathroom to gossip or whatever they had to do. Dunster was leaning against the wall of the landing, looking at me with his most intolerably amused expression.

  ‘You remember when they wanted me for Laertes to your terrible Hamlet?’ He now seemed proud of this fact. ‘That was what I was thinking of when I wrote the piece for the Informer.’

  ‘You do surprise me. It read as though you thought I was a person who went around terrorizing witnesses.’

  ‘Well, Beth is extremely upset about what you did to poor old Jaunty. You must have scared the wits out of the old devil.’

  ‘Where is Beth?’

  ‘Not coming.’ He looked at me. ‘She didn’t want to meet you.’

  The noise of the party rose several decibels. A girl sitting on the stairs started to laugh helplessly, no doubt at a wonderfully new piece of gossip. A man came up to try the bathroom door and went away frustrated. I tried to convince Dunster of the absurdity of his ideas.

  ‘Jaunty Blair was about to make a statement which would have cleared Cris completely. Do you honestly think I wanted to stop him doing that?’

  He still looked back at me with that infuriating amusement, as though he knew everything and I were a child who couldn’t understand.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any end to the dirty tricks Bellhanger’s lot would get up to. He was trained to that sort of thing in the war. Bloody well trained too. You’re just his newest recruit, old man. Perhaps you’re not fully involved yet. He may not tell you everything.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘I expect Cris’s lot had it in for Jaunty, for some reason or another. Maybe they scared him into making that very favourable statement you’re talking about and went a bit too far. But Jaunty’s not their number one target.’

  ‘Who is then?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Me.’

  I looked at him and tried my own superior smile. Dunster, I thought, you never cease to overestimate your own importance.

  ‘I’m not kidding myself. I’m a thorn in Cris Bellhanger’s flesh. I’m out to get him. Of course, he wants to get me first. It’s perfectly natural.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘It’s not really funny, old man. I live in a rather quiet sort of square.’

  ‘I know exactly where you live.’

  ‘I came out of the house. Yesterday morning. Quite early. I was crossing the road to get to my car. Some maniac in a red Cortina came round the corner and drove straight at me. I just managed to jump between the parked cars, but it was a bloody near thing. Luckily the milkman came pottering round and he scarpered.’

  The party and the party noise now seemed a long way away. I think the girls in black dresses came out of the bathroom and pushed past us. Down in the hall an early leaver was shouting goodbye. I said, ‘Did you get a look at the drive
r?’

  Dunster was smiling now, more confidently than ever. ‘Why, old man?’ he asked me. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I usually find that people who tell you that end up by also giving you detailed accounts of their dreams, or they have lain beside you dead to the world while you were careful not to breathe too loudly in case they woke up. I’m sure I did, in fact, sleep for a bit on the night of Mrs Oakshott’s party, but I also spent quite a lot of time downstairs, listening to the World Service on the kitchen radio and worrying.

  It was the red Cortina that started it all off. I saw a red Cortina turning round in Jaunty’s yard. Could it have been to liberate him, or to discover if he’d learnt whatever lesson his incarceration in the luton was meant to have taught him? A red Cortina was driven at Dunster in Camden Town, if Dunster were to be believed. It was not that he told deliberate lies – he might have seemed more human and fallible if he did – he merely made huge assumptions which then became Holy Writ, part of the unchallengeable Gospel according to Dunster. And yet I had never mentioned the red Cortina at Blair Cottage to him. Was its presence in both places too much of a coincidence?

  I made tea in the cold kitchen. Some listener to the World Service in Africa was requesting ‘Spread a Little Happiness’ with a dedication ‘to my cousin Joseph Okimbo in the Department of Justice’. There must be millions of red Cortinas, one of the most common cars in the country. One belonged to a tourist who’d lost his way and turned round at Blair Cottage. Another to a careless, or even dangerous, driver in a hurry, going round a square in Camden Town. And then I had a memory of something I hadn’t thought of in connection with either of these two incidents. When Jaunty had taken me to dinner at his appalling club, when he was troubled and wanted me to help him avoid trouble, there had been a man dominating one of the other tables. I began to remember a large, elderly man with a bald head fringed with grey hair and a broken nose who had been at the bar when we left and who had, perhaps or was I imagining it from a great distance – exchanged looks with Jaunty as I was leaving. The car turning in Jaunty’s yard had been driven by a bulky, elderly man, who looked like a Roman emperor.