Moggerhanger

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mabel answered the buzzer at Dumbell Mansions, and held the door to the flat open as I stepped from the lift. “Oh, Michael, I’m so glad to see you. Do come in. I’ll put your coat on a hanger to dry.”

It was unusual to be treated so like one of the family, but she wore a tie to her pearl buttoned blouse, which may have inspired her to pay more attention to the hierarchy. Blaskin’s voice boomed from the living room: “Michael, do come in, dear boy, and meet your long-lost sister.”

I was alarmed on hearing he still inhabited the batty hayloft of the novelist, knowing his moods to be as contagious as the flu on a tube train.

“He’s in quite a state,” Mabel whispered, on taking my hat. I should have known better than to call on him for a relaxing drink and sandwich. Where he got this sister nonsense I couldn’t think, but he was nothing if not entertaining, though I reflected on going in what a cross it was to have a novelist for your father.

He wore neat sharply creased twill trousers, an open-necked white shirt, a pearl buttoned wine-dark waistcoat, and shoes with as well polished a shine as Mabel could make. Seated on the vast leather settee, he had a long arm proprietorially around the shoulder of …

I was never one for shouting at the onset of shock, and sharing it with the rest of the world. Not me. Quick moves were my style, smart reactions for self-preservation, giving thought only sufficient time for me to decide what the emergency was about before battling in. And yet, and yet, as this encounter proved, I could be essentially inert when it suited me least. Why didn’t I turn and run? What man of action was I? A few peaceful days at Upper Mayhem had unthreaded me.

“This is the greatest day for me since — I don’t know when. Since Victory in Europe, perhaps. God knows where I was at the time. Probably throwing up in Piccadilly Circus. But I don’t see how it can’t turn out as good a day for you as for me, Michael. But come right in, and have a glass of champagne. Opening a bottle of the best is the least I can do on such a unique occasion.”

I could only surmise that Sophie had tracked me down from the evidence I had given her on the train. She had phoned Blaskin, who talked her into calling at the flat, and told her she would find me here, though he had done so only with the idea of luring her into his lascivious clutches, unable to know she had long since fallen into mine. Not that it would make any difference to him, because they were already drooling over each other so disgustingly that I felt mad with jealousy.

His rubbery lips nuzzled her to an extent that told me he must have thought up the father and daughter gag to make them more lecherous for going to bed, which accounted for the grief on poor Mabel’s face.

I put both hands on a chairback to keep me upright, but my astonishment was as nothing compared to Sophie’s. She needed, though I couldn’t think why, time to recognise me, and when Blaskin said: “This is Michael, your brother,” she gave a short throat-wobbling scream and fell back senseless.

“What the hell’s going on?” I shouted. “What’s all this brother and sister lark? If it’s your idea of drumming up a plot for a novel you can go and inseminate yourself.”

Genuine obscenities were ready for launching, and I held them back, because though Sophie lay in a half-fainting state, eyelashes flickering like those of a Ukrainian doll, I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t overhear and think badly of me. Mabel came from the kitchen to draw a cold wet flannel across Sophie’s forehead, while Blaskin, mumbling his distress, pressed Sophie’s hands to his lips.

Even now I couldn’t tell whether his expression was of undying malice, or tender concern for her condition, though if the latter this was the first time I had witnessed it. “Michael, she’s my long-lost daughter. She wrote a couple of weeks ago, and gave incontrovertible proof of the fact this morning.”

He regained his usual poise behind the settee, stood with hands in the armholes of his waistcoat, an attitude of pride he had never shown for me. On kneeling to kiss her forehead he looked up: “How dashed clever I must have been to pump a specimen of the female species into the world, but how sad not to know till now, when there’s so little life left to enjoy! Still, mustn’t get sentimental. That would be death for a novelist.”

Sophie beamed her lovely dark eyes on me as I drew the chair close to stop myself falling, hoping she’d deny any blood connection between us. “Tell me it isn’t true,” I croaked.

“Oh Michael, it is. He’s my father.” She looked stunned, as if like me she was close to a nervous crack-up, lips tight, and eyes uncertain about what or who to settle on, still unable to believe that she had come to meet her father, and then had a putative brother wheeled in. I sympathised, though not sufficiently for it to be mistaken for a sign of loving kinship. “When Gilbert — my father — told me I had a brother,” she said, “I didn’t know what to expect or think.”

When she began to cry, and Blaskin all but licked up her tears, I prayed for a twenty-two carat bijou gem of a nightmare from which I could at least wake up. She looked around with what I hoped was panic and disbelief, put a finger to her lips, as if pleading with me to say nothing concerning our previous meetings. For one irresponsible moment I was tempted to let Blaskin know, in revenge for foisting this situation on me, that I had already committed incest, and that it was his fault for not having used french letters in his feckless youth. I wanted to kill him as well for omitting to don condoms with my mother, because if he had taken care neither Sophie nor I would have been locked by such come-to-bed eyes as happened now. The Wagon-Lits couplings between Boulogne and Milan came back with intense clarity, and a sudden slide of the tongue between Sophie’s lips told me she was re-running the scene as well.

Blaskin turned to me. “You don’t seem to have quite taken in what I said, Michael. I present you with a beautiful sister, and there hasn’t been a word of joy or welcome. How can it be? Your presence certainly had a profound effect on her, to the extent that she hasn’t been able to say anything. But you might show some response.”

“I’m overwhelmed with happiness,” was the best I could do.

“Give her a kiss, then.”

Her recovery was quicker than mine, perhaps because she was a woman, and had known of the connection longer. I held one of the hands that had previously roamed my naked body, and leaned forward to kiss her lips. “I love you, Michael,” she said, for Blaskin to hear. “It’s love at first sight, dear brother.”

“And I love you. I’ve never had a sister. It’s going to be tremendous. What times we’ll have. It’s the most stunning thing that’s ever happened to me.”

When the contact went on too long, for decency’s sake we drew apart. Blaskin’s expression was — I can’t find a more accurate word — mawkish. Someone who hadn’t known him for long would have found him unrecognisable. Such simpering pride and irredeemable self-love had never before come out of a novelist. “I’m sure you’ll both have a lot to talk about.” He turned to Mabel, and became himself again: “Don’t just stand there. Bring us some coffee. Then you can think of what to cook for lunch. We’ll be hungry by then.”

Nothing in this situation could be real. It was all a piece of theatre, Blaskin suddenly taken with the notion of writing for the stage. Either that or he had got to know Sophie a few days ago — maybe in a club or pub, or even a post office queue — and they had devised this scenario between them as a bit of cruel S and M to send me crazy. I was having none of it.

And yet, when coffee came, and Sophie talked — on Blaskin urging her to — she related how he had made her mother pregnant, then left her, as he had mine. It was impossible either to doubt or to argue, because every detail slotted in. I speculated as to whether or not in too long he would lumber me with a brother, or brothers, probably twins, with more sisters thrown in. At least Sophie and I hadn’t come with the same mother, which was one good outcome of Blaskin’s scattergun philandering, and I suppose the fact that we weren’t full brother and sister accounted for the lechery I felt for Sophie as she proved that we were indeed so closely related.

“Well, my boy”—he couldn’t ask often enough — “how do you feel now?”

“I won’t know for a few months, except it’s as if I’ve won the lottery. It’s a surprise, which I’m sure even a novelist like you can understand.”

His arm went around her again, much to Mabel’s stare of disapproval, while I thought it as well that we were both present, otherwise, daughter or not, incest would be a mere bagatelle to such a walking penis. I still couldn’t credit the fact that the whole thing wasn’t a dummy run for his next novel. He would certainly use it sometime.

He went to a cupboard. “What we need is a fair splash of five-star Napoleon.” The bitten off cork sailed towards the fireplace. He lit a long thin cigar, rolled the empty champagne bottle towards the kitchen for Mabel to pick up, then poured three tumblers of brandy as if it were cold tea. “Oh, father,” Sophie said, with the kind of sexy laugh I recalled from our cavorting on the train, “that’s far too much for me.”

“What? Is that a daughter of mine speaking? I can’t believe it. Take a sip, anyhow. You’ll soon feel as on top of the world as I am.”

I needed a drink, and so did Blaskin, whether he needed it or not, and seeing the pair of us working our gullets to get it down, Sophie took a sip as if she couldn’t go on living without it either. Mabel came in with a platter of roastbeef sandwiches on brown bread, cut neatly into triangles, in her wisdom realising that without something to soak up the alcohol we would soon be on the floor. Blaskin might have had that in mind but, even so, the brandy had such an effect on the three of us that he relaxed enough to fill a tumbler for Mabel: “Join the family party, darling. I’m feeling paternal and expansive. I might even marry you one of these days, and make you the wicked stepmother of my darling daughter. How does that strike you?”

She drank more of the four-star firewater than I thought good for her. “It’s hardly a time for levity, Gilbert. Now that you have a daughter as well as a son you’ll have to act more responsibly. You’ll have to mind your Ps and Qs, won’t you? Or so I would think. Any other man would.”

I well knew that brandy would make him violent and abusive, and wasn’t far wrong when he responded: “Don’t lecture me, otherwise your possibly future stepchildren will witness the shameful scene of you getting a well-deserved smack across those frigid cheeks, not to mention being thrown bodily into the street. Now have another greedy swig, and let us hear no more of your moral strictures.”

I saw Sophie wondering at the adder bin she had fallen into, and began to question how much longer I would have a sister on tap, or Blaskin keep so loving a daughter close by. Mabel sat and finished her brandy, cheeks colouring like one of Harry Wheatcroft’s more flamboyant roses. “Gilbert,” she said, “I’ve just about had enough of your disgraceful remarks. I can’t allow you to humiliate me before the children. It’s the last straw.”

I was mistaken about Sophie, for she seemed to be enjoying a situation which would cushion the shock of having met me in such unexpected circumstances.

“I’m not trying to humiliate you, darling. God forbid! It’s simply that I don’t see why you should be so prickly at my sudden good fortune. And yet you are upset. Who better than me to recognise the signs? The face of an unhappy woman not only goes beyond grief in the beholder fortunate enough to witness it, but he feels his heart touched as well.”

He was trying to convince his daughter that he was a human being. It couldn’t last, but I was absorbed by Sophie’s expression of admiration at the effort he was making, and by the love that enabled him to be so eloquent about it. She obviously hadn’t met a writer before, at least not one like him.

“My paramour and myself are incipient schizophrenics,” he said, “who have learned that the only way to go on living with our condition is to stay together. We’re that rare couple who can never part unless we kill each other at the same instant, and where would be the sense or even the possibility of that?”

So far so good, or at least not too bad, but he poured Mabel another half tumbler and, being so near out of control after the first goodly portion, she thoughtlessly quaffed it, which turned her expanse of forehead as red as a traffic light.

“We’re so locked together in our love and passion,” he said to Sophie, “that I can’t post a letter without her suspecting me of having a clandestine affair. She counted the stamps yesterday, and played hell because one was missing. She demanded to know who I’d written to. Not being the man to hurt a woman, at least not unknowingly, I told her I’d posted a letter to the tax authorities with a first-class stamp. If the cheque got there too late a man, or men, would come and take my goods and chattels away, and they might, in their rapacious enthusiasm, take Mabel as well, which would break my heart.”

There was always more meaning in what Blaskin said than what he did, and he was obviously trying to weave a spell around Sophie, with what object I couldn’t yet say, because he was blinding me with his words as well, helped by the brandy I had stupidly put back. But while I had at least a notion as to what he was doing, Sophie had none whatsoever, and sat back looking at him like a rabbit before a snake. Even Mabel halfway sensed his purpose, which must have been why she let him go on:

“In my younger days I was idiotic enough to think property was theft, but now it’s income tax. They want eight thousand pounds from me, and thank God I have it in the bank. That’s eight hundred bottles of whisky — a bottle a day for two years, with two on Sunday. I told Mabel this, because you have to be absolutely straight and honest with the person you love, otherwise it’s here today and gone tomorrow — though where from? Oh yes, where was I?” He lifted his glass to Mabel’s face which was rapidly becoming formless. “The only way to live a painless life is to be continually half cut. Take whatever fate throws at you, and laugh over it, though only to yourself, even if you’re so paralysed you can no longer write, which state is what Mabel would like to see me in, though who can blame her?”

He gave a wild laugh. “No one can go from this world without dying. The black dog bites in the best weather, when you’re at your happiest, and I don’t want to die with my boots on, only when my mouth is full. Not that I could die with my boots on, because my women are very particular that I get them off before jumping into bed. Aren’t you, darling? Tonight I’m giving a lecture called ‘The Creativity of Passion in the Life of a Novelist.’ Or is it tomorrow? I hope so. Maybe it was yesterday. I’ll have to look in my diary.”

He was becoming incoherent. “You’re a ragbag of platitudinous encomiums,” I told him.

“What?” he cried, as if I had stabbed him. “What did you say? Come on, out with it again. No, save it till I can write it down.” He put a hand on his heart and began to sing, swaying so far sideways I hoped he would fall and crack his nose: “Pack up your truffles in your old kitbag, and smile, smile, smile …”

Mabel managed to articulate from her stupor: “Gilbert, you’re a frightful bore. And you give me too much to complain about.”

His pain seemed almost real. “Not in front of my daughter, darling, please, however much of a case you have. It’s also a mark of good breeding never to complain.”

“Even better breeding,” she riposted, to our surprise, “is not to complain of anyone complaining.”

“Oh, I don’t complain. Novelists never do. They dramatise. For example, when I’m looking into the quadrangle of my imaginary Piranesi jail I’m seeing the victim of a man who loved too much. He’s on his knees, moving along, but now and again he stands up and howls like a dog with a hot nose. He wears out a pair of trousers a week at the knees, but the warders don’t mind, because locomoting in such a way keeps him out of mischief, and saves a fortune in straitjackets.”

Sophie laughed. “Oh, I just love you, father.”

“Very much likewise, my dear. You’ve made a happy man of me today. I’m only sorry Mabel can’t take the fact on board. Perhaps I’ve been brutal and uncaring in never telling her when I was happy. On the other hand I never said I was unhappy. But when I was happy I ought to have said so, and didn’t because I thought she assumed I was happy. So perhaps I was. But Mabel is very frequently unhappy, because it’s the only weapon she has to make me unhappy, and she uses it like Captain Blood swinging across the rigging of her misconceptions. Therefore she makes me unhappy, and when two people are unhappy they make each other even more unhappy. A short time ago I was going to take her to a country hotel for the weekend called The White Elephant, for a treat. It’s set in three hundred acres of rolling landscape, and cost two hundred pounds a night. ‘A warm welcome to all our guests,’ said the gaudy brochure. And then, in small print: ‘No dogs, no children, and no smoking.’ So I cancelled, and it was something else she never forgave me for. I tried to make amends when she showed me an article in the newspaper saying you could stop smoking in one hour. I tried it, and did. I was proud of myself. She was proud of me, too, spooned so sickeningly at my success that on the sixty-first minute I lit a cigar to stop myself going up the wall.”

He paused, as if waiting for Mabel to have a heart attack. “Where was I? I was saying how happy I was to have discovered my darling daughter. See, I’ve made her laugh, and what man can want more than that? Yesterday I thought there was no romance left in my life. It was one of those increasingly rare moments when I imagined I was dying, either by cancer or my own hand — which is much the same thing. Fact is, I fall in love every few days, usually with a young woman passing along the street. I see her for only a few seconds, and sometimes she’s even older than Mabel, but I can be won over by a beautiful face.”

“You eternally randy bastard,” I broke in, seeing how Sophie was enjoying his spiel so much that he would go on forever if not stopped. But my remark had no effect.

“How can I live like that, when Mabel leaves me every full moon? She always comes back though, bless her, and sits in her room for a day playing the ‘Dead March’ from Saul, until she can bear to look at me again. She’s really a man in disguise, but she’s got a nice solid bosom, and loves other men. Maybe she had a transplant before birth, then set out to get me. If I hadn’t had all kinds of women I would begin to doubt the pleasure principle.”

Mabel fell with a great rumble onto the carpet.

“She might have had the decency to cook our lunch first,” Blaskin scowled.

“Poor woman.” Sophie joined me in getting her into the bedroom, though no sooner had we laid her down than she snapped free and ran for the toilet.

“Serve her right for getting mixed up with a writer,” Blaskin said, who would have fallen too, except that he lowered himself in time onto the settee. “What a wedding breakfast for me and my new found daughter. Can you cook, my love?”

“I’ve been known to,” Sophie said, “if there are pizzas in the freezer, and a dozen eggs. Otherwise I can’t boil water without burning it. My husband was glad to see the back of me because I’m no good in the kitchen.”

“Come and live here, then,” Blaskin slobbered.

“Oh no, I have a perfectly good house in Golders Green.”

He lay back, and closed his eyes. Sophie in the kitchen pulled a pack of lamb chops and some eggs from the fridge. “It’s marvellous, having you for a sister,” I said.

She was in my arms, breasts pressing against me, soft and hot, her lips warm on mine. “Oh, Michael darling, I’ve done nothing since I last saw you except think about us being on that train, and now that you’re my brother I want to go to bed with you more than ever.”

My knee was between her thighs. “Sweetheart, I can’t wait. We’re only half brother and sister, after all.”

“If we were full brother and sister,” she murmured, “it would blow the top of my head off. I’d never stop coming. Oh I love you. Don’t ever give me up.”

About to explode in a cloud of sperm, I eased her away. “We should sell the situation as an aphrodisiac, print false birth certificates to prove people are brother and sister. The birth rate would go up no end. We’ll call our firm Incest Incorporated.”

“You always have such good ideas.” Stopped in mid laugh, her eyes glazed as if she was about to die, then she also rushed for the bathroom, to be spectacularly sick. After what she’d drunk I was not surprised. I had taken care to put back less than anybody else, and now that hunger gnawed I didn’t expect to follow her.

Eggs went into an omelette pan, and chops laid under the grill. Slicing cucumber caused me to salivate, and I salted and quartered a tomato to put into my mouth. Blaskin was snoring like an engine on a Rolls Royce testbed, Mabel lay in an alabaster pose as if she would never get up again, and Sophie sat on the lidded toilet waiting for the next attack. A stint of cooking I was more than willing to do.

I’d picked up the notion from my mother that food would cure everything. If you had a gut ache she would say, eat. Likewise if you were dizzy. Belly pains needed something to grind on, otherwise you were letting yourself in for a more intense bout later. If you couldn’t stop coughing, eat. The tickles in your throat would go away. You had diarrhea? Eat. Constipation? Think nothing of it. Eat, because you’d need the padding soon enough. Illness of any sort could only be due to a lack of fodder.

So we must scoff plenty to soak up the alcohol, and make recovery certain. I stripped fat from a chop and reinforced more tomato with a slice of rye bread, feeling better by the time Sophie stood pale faced in the doorway: “I think I’m all right at last.”

I took in now that she must indeed be my sister, no longer hoped it was a dream, and gave her a glass of water. Pointing to a stain of sick on her blouse, I passed a paper towel. I’d do it for anybody, but how was she to know? Best not to tell her. “What a caring brother,” she smiled, as if we should start living together.

“Set the table next door. We’ll be eating soon.”

She picked up a bundle of knives and forks. “We’ll meet often, won’t we?”

“I’ll never be able to leave you alone.” Always say what a woman wants to hear, because she invariably needs the consolation, though I couldn’t help thinking that Sophie already had everything.

“Kiss me, then.”

I did, hands around her backside, but she couldn’t do anything with her hands full of cutlery. She broke away to lay the table, came back for plates. “They’re in the stove getting warm,” I told her.

“You think of everything. How did you learn to cook?”

“I watched my mother,” though I couldn’t remember. I had catered for Bridget while she was in the signal box giving birth. I’ll never know why she insisted on having her babies there, only that Almanack Jack and I had a right struggle getting a double bed up the wooden steps. I flipped the omelette. “There’s nothing to it but common sense.”

“My husband’s a real chauvinist pig. He doesn’t even come into the kitchen.”

“Can you blame him? I’d like to be one except it just isn’t in me. I suppose you’d be a female chauvinist sow if you could get away with it. I’d expect no less from a sister of mine.” When I pulled her to me she put a hand between my legs, only stopped undoing my buttons on seeing Mabel’s face of sour disapproval in the doorway. She had been about to witness a real live Rocky Horror incest sex show on the floor of her pristine scrubbed kitchen, and I could only smile. “See if you can bring Gilbert round,” I told her, “because we’ll be eating any minute. Take this platter with you, and these napkins.”

She came back. “I won’t put up with it. It’s downright wicked, what you were about to do. I saw you. I saw you.”

I pushed a basket of bread into her hands, thinking she ought to be grateful for my labour at the stove. “Put up with what?”

She was about to stamp her foot, but realised I wasn’t Blaskin. “You know very well what I mean.”

I was beginning to understand why he treated her as he did, then blanched at the idea that I should be able to do so. “On my honour, I don’t.” She stood in my way. “Let’s go in and eat, otherwise everything will go cold.”

“Turning the flat into a brothel,” she said. “That’s what. It’s unseemly. And with your sister!”

I ought to have regretted losing self-control, but couldn’t resist. “I know. And she was about to suck me off, but in any case what the fuck has it got to do with you? Apart from which, I simply don’t know why you should be so upset.”

“She’s chagrined at not being invited to join in,” Sophie said. “Aren’t you, darling?”

Blaskin’s voice boomed from the living room. “Don’t let her bully you, my children. She’s the world’s worst bully, a Britannia and Boadicea rolled into one. When you’re not here she bullies me from morning to night. The only way to stop her is to attack first, which I learned the hard way, and often resort to it to keep my self-respect.”

A flush of fury went over her face. I thought of walking out of the flat, but didn’t for Sophie’s sake, so pushed by, wanting the four of us to sit down and eat. Blaskin looked dangerously refreshed by his nap, took a goodly portion of the omelette, and spread butter on his bread as thickly as if it was a brick to build a house. He uncorked a bottle of Beaujolais and, I will say this for his good name, poured a glass for Mabel, as if wanting to dispel her frosty expression. Sophie and I stared at each other, longing for only one thing, which of course would have to wait.

Mabel, head lowered, sipped her wine. Then she looked up at the ceiling. “All this about Sophie being his daughter is stuff and nonsense.”

Did she know something I didn’t yet know? But: “Don’t believe her,” Sophie said to me. “Your father and I went through every detail. There can’t be any doubt.”

Blaskin picked up a chop, looked at it as if for poison or maggots, and bit out the heart. “Pure unadulterated jealousy is what Mabel’s on about, children. Envy, sour grapes, sublimated lust even — though I haven’t yet figured from what angle.”

“I only have your wellbeing at heart,” Mabel said, “to save you from a catastrophic slide into immorality and madness.”

Sophie and I attended to the food as if apart from them, me thinking that in this emotional penal colony the plates should have been made of paper, knives and forks of plastic, and the wine served in beakers. Blaskin didn’t respond immediately to Mabel, which was ominous, so I ate more quickly in order to be finished when the balloon went up. People were as mechanical as toys, predictable in their behaviour, as if fully formed at birth and set going like clockwork to do their worst in life, as with Mabel and Blaskin.

Because of his silence Mabel was still half cut enough to think she could take up where she had left off. “We’ve been living together for more than eight years, but I can’t see our association going on for much longer, because in all that time you haven’t made any honest attempt to mend your ways. Another human being most certainly would have. Oh I know, deep inside you there’s a core of sensibility that I love and am very proud to be associated with, but you’ve always perversely chosen to ignore it.”

He ate as if he too was on his own, but as she paused, steaming herself up for a further salvo of irritating criticism, he said calmly: “The trouble with getting old, my dear children — and I want you to listen to this as well, Mabel — is that you become more tolerant, more easy going, in the knowledge that it’s the best way to enjoy what years of life are left.”

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.