Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon Read online

  In Trafalgar Square there were in evidence many other preparations for the funeral. Lord Malquist was reminded that Lord Nelson had copied his clothes from those worn by one of his (Lord Malquist’s) ancestors, I believe. Lord Malquist also quoted from the poets, ‘No man is an island etc.’

  Shortly after this however an unfortunate incident occurred. As we were going down Pall Mall a woman in the crowd threw herself under our coach, for what purpose I cannot tell, and the horses bolted. The poor coachman -O’Hara by name-could do nothing but guide them up St James’s and into Piccadilly, their fire by no means spent.

  By chance Lady Malquist was leaving the Ritz as we were approaching but she did not see us and we were unable to stop. We saw her turn into Green Park and there – the second of two remarkable coincidences – we caught a glimpse of Rollo! Again we could not stop. We were in Park Lane when we narrowly avoided being involved in a serious accident, but by that time the horses were tiring from their exertions and O’Hara was able to guide them off the main road, very close to my own home. As it happened there was another horse outside my house and I imagine that the two greys were relieved to find one of their own kind for they were at last halted at my own door.

  Lord Malquist and I went inside and I was privileged to introduce my wife Jane to him. She was entertaining a friend, Mr Jones, and not long afterwards another gentleman called, also riding a horse. He was acquainted with Mr Jones. Both he and Mr Jones rode off on their horses. Meanwhile a man on a donkey had also stopped outside my house and we welcomed him in to join us.

  Lord Malquist got on famously with Jane and it was decided on the instant that dinner at the club could wait until another day.

  Tomorrow I hope to do better justice to Lord Malquist’s conversation – I did in fact make some notes today but unfortunately my notebook was destroyed in a small fire later on.

  FOUR

  Spectator as Hero

  I

  IT TOOK MOON a long time to write his journal of the day. He sat in the kitchen typing. Jane did not come home.

  He had to keep stopping, sometimes for many minutes between sentences, trying to reassemble forgotten conversations but able only to trace an outline of events in which he hardly believed any more. Lord Malquist had instructed him that the journal should conceal its commercial inspiration and be ostensibly a private diary in which the ninth earl’s part was coincidental, if dominant. But Moon decided not to mention his bomb or Marie’s death or the General. He supposed that the General was dead too. The bomb sat by his elbow as he typed, watch-ticked contentedly, the metal key recessed into its flat bottom turning slowly as an hour-hand towards oblivion. Moon had not noted the exact time when he pressed the plunger but he calculated that he had until ten or half past in the morning. There was no hurry.

  * * *

  When the flames of his notebook had guttered out, Moon had stared in disbelief at the three bodies on the carpet (the Risen Christ was the only one to show any sign of life: a sudden gabble of obscure protestation) and had gone to sit half way up the stairs in the cubic centre of the house, hugging his bomb to him, and he had sat quite still until the water from the overflowing bath blotted its way down the stair-carpet and reached him over an hour later.

  The damp seeped into his trance and woke him. He was cold. He got up and felt the cold on the soles of his feet. Water was pressed out of the carpet and soothed his stiffening wound. On the upstairs landing he had to paddle. When he turned off the taps he experienced again the illusion of silence being broken by stillness.

  In the bedroom he dressed himself very consciously as though dressing someone else who was himself. His grey suit (his best one, put on to go calling on the aristocracy) was a wet heap on the floor. He chose at random one of the three pairs of trousers and one of the two jackets hanging in the wardrobe. Dressed, he limped downstairs holding his bomb. The cuts on his hand and face had dried into crusts. His foot was still tender but he had managed to squeeze it into its shoe without unwrapping the handkerchief and the ears of the knot flapped against his bare ankle. He was hungry.

  In the kitchen the tap-water splashed into the sink but there was no overflow. Gas jets flared and the geyser roared softly. Moon put his bomb on the table and quietened the kitchen down. The bomb ticked quietly with flat flannelled softness. Moon tried to imitate it making small man-to-horse sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  There was an untidy heap of tins on the table-pork ‘n’ beans. Moon opened two tins and emptied them into the frying pan to which were stuck some old cold greasy beans from another time. He lit the stove and went over to the window and inhaled the country air that rolled down from the far hills up the long grey lawn towards him.

  When he had finished eating Moon went back to the drawing-room. The Risen Christ was still drunkenly asleep, snoring now. The General lay against a chair with his hair blood-coloured and spiky. Moon hardly gave him a glance but looked down at Marie for a few seconds. All her top-clothes seemed to have been gathered into a bunched belt below her ribs. Her bare belly looked smooth and alive, about to be sucked into the vortex of her navel. Moon stared at it. (You are calm and sweet and young and dear and I see a long happy life if you don’t get shot through the hollow of your little breasts.) He bent to rearrange her dress, drew the skirt down to her knees.

  From his writing desk he took out a sheaf of clean paper and, after searching, a much-used carbon. He balanced the pile on the portable typewriter and carried it all into the kitchen and put the typewriter down next to the bomb. At a particular moment calculable within a micro-second he died from the terror of a recollection, and was brought back to life by his fear. He looked back into the hall and crept along to the bottom of the stairs. He looked up but saw no one. At the door of the drawing-room he paused again and jumped into the room looking wildly behind the door. There was no one there. Moon went over to the Risen Christ and kicked him in the back.

  ‘Get up,’ said Moon. ‘You’re awake.’

  The Risen Christ lay still.

  ‘You’re faking – I know you are. You’ve been up-you turned off the music.’

  The Risen Christ slept on with his mouth open.

  Moon shouted, ‘Who turned off the music?’

  He looked around. The radio dial glowed green. The button-light on the record-player stared red. He remembered that the arm of the record-player came back to rest automatically. When he turned the tuner on the radio, voices and music overtook each other. He turned the needle back to where it had been and caught the faint crackle of a station gone off the air.

  Moon went back to the kitchen and started to type his journal.

  January 29. Awoke late as is my custom …

  He typed badly, and when it came to framing sentences he found that he had no natural style and that it was all coming out stilted. He supposed that this would be appropriate enough for his purposes. But the loss of his notebook made it all very difficult. There were things he could not remember – a short oration by Lord Malquist outside the house of the dying hero; the colour of his smoking jacket; conversation about his book, his wife, his muffins. Moon had forgotten them all and he was conscientious enough to feel guilt. He thought that the results of his first day’s work would not please the ninth earl. Jane came home naked and weeping. He seduced her standing up, pressing her to the wall.

  And was woken up by the Risen Christ.

  The Risen Christ kept punching Moon on the shoulder, wild and gabbling.

  ‘Here!’

  Moon sat back in his chair. He had fallen asleep across the table. He felt awful, his face drawn and bloodless.

  ‘Here! There’s been murder! I’m telling you-there’s corpses all over the shop!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Moon said. ‘I know all about it.’

  He went over to the sink and splashed water over his face. His foot was stiff and sore.

  ‘Who done it, then?’

  Moon limped past him to the drawing-ro
om. All the colours in the room looked drained out. Marie and the General lay as he had left them. There were pieces of broken bottle and sheepdog scattered about. Moon didn’t know what to do.

  There should be a service for this kind of thing. Send a couple of chaps round before my wife gets back. Corpses distress her. They distress me. I don’t want anything to do with it. I’ll be upstairs and it’s all got to be normal when I come down. I’ll put a cheque in the post.

  ‘It wasn’t me begorrah, I’m not a violent man.’

  ‘You were drunk,’ said Moon. ‘How do you know?’

  The Risen Christ looked at him and blew air out of his cheeks in a long expostulating denial. He shook his head.

  ‘What would I – listen, I just never seen them before.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Moon. ‘Get rid of them and tidy the place up. My wife will be home sometime.’

  ‘Get rid of them?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be upstairs and I’ll put a cheque – I’ll pay you.’

  ‘Now wait a minute, yer honour, wait a minute – bodies is not an easy thing to get rid of. Besides it’s not a thing to do with me – I never killed them at all.’

  ‘I never said you did.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ The Risen Christ looked at him hopeful and beseeching.

  ‘I said if you did kill them then you wouldn’t know because you were drunk.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘That’s all right then. I’ll telephone the police.’

  ‘The police? Yes, now just one moment sir, I don’t know that I—’

  ‘They’ll know what to do,’ said Moon. ‘It’s their job.’

  He looked out of the window. It was just getting light. The donkey stood asleep by the railings.

  The Risen Christ said, ‘Look, I mean I’ve got no experience – I wouldn’t know how to get about a thing like that.’

  ‘It’s easy enough. Just take them outside and find a place and leave them there.’

  The Risen Christ shook his head again.

  ‘Oh I don’t know about that. You can’t walk around the streets carrying bodies just like that.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Moon. He supposed not. Despite everything. ‘I’ve got to get this place tidied up,’ he said.

  Moon pushed all the furniture off the carpet against the walls. He dragged the General round to lie beside Marie and folded the carpet over them. That was better. After much manoeuvring and lifting he managed to get the carpet rolled fairly tightly round the two bodies.

  ‘Get some rope.’

  The Risen Christ looked around trying to divine rope out of the room.

  ‘Ah. Where would you be keeping the rope, yer honour?’

  ‘We don’t keep rope,’ said Moon. ‘I don’t know.’

  Irritably he went into the kitchen. He had never ever noticed a piece of rope lying around anywhere. He went upstairs and came down with Jane’s dressing-gown cord and a leather belt. He bound the carpet-roll at each end, making a seven-foot Christmas cracker.

  ‘Right,’ said Moon. ‘Off we go.’

  The Risen Christ gave him a terrified look and stuttered,

  ‘I can’t – I ca’n – you don’t expect—’

  ‘On the donkey,’ Moon said.

  He grasped one end of the carpet and the Risen Christ doubtfully got hold of the other. They came up quite easily but the middle stayed plumped on the floor.

  They dropped their ends.

  ‘Go and bring the donkey,’ Moon said.

  ‘Bring it? Where?’

  ‘Here. Bring it in.’

  The Risen Christ looked as if he was going to cry. But he went out and Moon sat down on the carpet. He remembered that he was sitting on Marie so he got up and watched the Risen Christ through the window. He was pulling the donkey up the steps by the halter. The donkey entered the room and stood by the fireplace seeming quite at home, as in a children’s story. Moon and the Risen Christ heaved the carpet sideways onto the donkey’s back. It balanced there precariously.

  ‘You’ll have to sit on top,’ Moon decided. ‘Otherwise they’ll fall off.’

  The Risen Christ clutched his arm and pleaded, ‘Look here, yer honour, I wouldn’t know where to take them or anything – I could be stopped any time, any time at all. What’m I goin’ to tell them?’

  ‘Say you’re a carpet seller. An Armenian. You don’t speak English.’

  ‘But I’m the Risen Christ! – it looks bad.’

  Moon had forgotten.

  ‘Well tell them that.’

  The bulked carpet was high as the Risen Christ’s shoulders.

  ‘I can’t get up there, sir,’ he complained.

  Moon led the donkey alongside a straight-backed chair. The Risen Christ climbed on the chair as if it were his scaffold, and swung his leg over the monstrous saddle.

  ‘Faith, it’s like being on a bloody camel.’ He looked down tearfully from his great height.

  Moon led the donkey into the hall. The Risen Allah be praised. If anyone wants me I’ll be in the British Museum cataloguing shards while the years roll by. The past is good enough for me. The front door was open and the space framed Long John Slaughter who stood feet apart, hat straight, left hand easy by his hip. Slaughter was a left-handed gun.

  When the Risen Christ saw him he let out a little yelp.

  ‘Early,’ Slaughter said. He watched carefully as the donkey moved down the hall towards him. ‘Nice.’ He took the halter from Moon and stopped the donkey. ‘Fancy.’

  Moon watched. He was not involved, he was a spectator. It was a private view.

  The Risen Christ said nothing.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Slaughter said. ‘What’s he selling? A Jesus movie?’

  ‘Carpets,’ said the Risen Christ. ‘I don’t speak English, I’m an American.’ He had managed to raise a certain hauteur but it collapsed at Slaughter’s stare.

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Yes, yer honour.’

  Slaughter’s face was working around an emotion that it could not express in words. His hand moved fast as a rattle snake and his gun hit the floor and bounced. He bent and picked it up in one fluid movement, straightening up with the gun pointed at the Risen Christ’s chest.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ the Risen Christ screamed.

  Slaughter grated out: ‘You been rolling my gal on your carpet?’

  ‘I never saw her before,’ shrieked the Risen Christ. ‘Yer honour I had a drop o’ the hard stuff and I don’ remember a thing at all.’

  Slaughter lost control of his face. He lowered the gun.

  ‘For you.’ He started to cry. ‘For a dirty little runt of a carpet salesman. I’ll kill that bitch.’

  In tears he let go the halter and ran shouting and crying up the stairs and disappeared along the landing. Moon kicked the donkey on the hind legs and it lurched out of the door and down the steps. The Risen Christ nearly fell off but the donkey levelled out just in time. Moon watched them sway down the street.

  He could hear doors being opened and slammed and Slaughter shouting, ‘Fertility!’

  When the cowboy came back into view Moon said, ‘She’s not here.’

  Slaughter sat down on the top step and wept into his shirt. Moon went up and sat down next to him. Slaughter made room for him. Moon waited till he stopped crying. They sat on the top step.

  Slaughter sniffed and rubbed his eyes on his sleeve and scratched his head with the gun-barrel. He put the gun back into his holster.

  ‘Well, that’s women,’ he said. ‘You can never tell, can you? Just imagine-that dirty dwarf in a nightshirt. Was he genuine?’

  ‘A genuine what?’ asked Moon.

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

  That’s what I’d like to know. Who’s a genuine what?

  ‘I’ll tell you quite frankly, old boy,’ Slaughter said, and Moon’s brain registered an inconsistency moments before he caught up on it, ‘that girl has treated me abominably, I really cared for her
I don’t mind admitting but she’s been toying with me, you know – toying with me, playing games – oh, I’ve had a frightful time …

  Moon said, ‘You really took me in. You’re not really a cowboy, then?’

  ‘Good lord no,’ Slaughter replied. ‘Mind you – I like being a cowboy.’

  ‘And – Mr Jones?’

  ‘He likes it too.’ He looked at Moon searchingly – ‘You don’t think she cares for him, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  They sat silent for a few moments. Moon tried to make a reassessment but it eluded him.

  Slaughter sighed.

  ‘That girl, you know … She has been tormenting me in a way that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst – well, I’d wish it upon Jasper.’

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘Well, it was our area, you see. We ride in pairs. Oh, she took us in, she was delightful. Gay, you know…’ He reflected. ‘As soon as I saw her I didn’t want to know about anyone else,’ and sniffed tearfully, ‘I’ve gone through absolute hell – I haven’t slept, I can’t keep away.’

  ‘If I were you I should drop her,’ Moon said. ‘She’s not worth it.’

  ‘Do you work here?’

  ‘No. Well, I do, yes, but I’m in a different position, being married to her, you know.’

  ‘Married to who?’

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘Fertility?’ Long John stared at him. ‘She told me her husband was killed in a duel.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Moon said, grateful for Slaughter’s embarrassment. ‘She’s like that.’

  ‘All the time?’

  Moon gave that his serious consideration.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you put up with it – I’d kill her.’

  ‘I love her,’ said Moon keening inside with his desperate love.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Slaughter.

  Moon said, ‘There was nothing between her and that fellow on the donkey, you know.’

  ‘Wasn’t there?’

  ‘No, really,’ Moon comforted him. ‘He was confused. He thought you were talking about something else.’ He remembered then. ‘Marie’s dead. You killed Marie.’