Moggerhanger

Chapter Twenty-One

What to do, that was the life and death question. Sun sharpened through the sharded windows and half blinded me. “Fucking Moggerhanger,” Parkhurst was saying. “Fancy getting sent to boarding school with a name like that. The other kids made my life a torment. They called me Moggers, Moggy, Muggers and Buggers, then Tomcat, till one day at home I came across some cartons of hashish cigarettes, and took a couple back to school. The lads stopped giving me a hard time when I handed around four hundred fags.”

At the zenith of his power over me Parkhurst had turned as garrulous as his father, and because I was still alive I had to listen. He held the gun so steady that Jericho Jim saw no need to brandish his.

“But they liked me at school then, didn’t they? It was good old Moggers, shit-hot Moggers, Moggers the Great.” I thought he was going to cry, though no such luck. It might have made things worse. “I hated every single fuckface, but I had to survive. The corridors didn’t stink of shit and carbolic anymore. They smelled all nice and vegetarian, and I don’t exaggerate when I say we walked on air. Funnily enough, though, whenever a teacher asked a question a lot more of us knew the answer. We sharpened up no end. Even the teachers begged a few ciggies when they twigged from the pong what was going on. It was the sixties, so they weren’t going to shop me, were they? As long as I left a pack on the head’s desk now and again we were all right anyway. All I had to do was make sure I got some more when I went home, and there was plenty lying around. When I told the old man that I wanted to come home more often he thought it was because I’d suddenly started to love my parents. I sucked up to the bastard, didn’t I? I even straightened my tie when he told me to, and stopped wearing my hat backwards.”

“Later, when he bribed the headmaster into letting me stay on in the sixth form at St. Ogg’s I took some cocaine after one exeat.” He laughed, which wasn’t promising for my safety. “I nearly had the whole school flat on its back. Got chucked out, didn’t I? He played hell with me, because he’d thrown away a few grand.”

“And you didn’t appreciate his generosity?” I said.

He waved the gun at my nose. “Fuck you, Cullen. I’m only telling you all this because you’re his favourite. He thinks you’re the tops. You’re a man after his own heart. He’s told me that for years. What a pity it is I’m not like you, he says. But you’re too much like him, which is why he likes you, you bum-crawling bastard. I hate your guts.”

I wasn’t about to argue, though I wanted to strangle the pathetic worm because I’d heard too many people telling me I resembled someone I either despised or found contemptible.

I just let him talk. “He always disliked me. For three months after fetching me from the orphanage a social worker came to check how I was getting on. Moggerhanger just fawned over her. She was new in her job, and ended up saying how lucky I was to have such a perfect haven. Perfect haven! Like hell it was. More like perfect hell, as it turned out. But they were her words, and I suppose it looked like it. Whenever Moggerhanger started laying toys around me on the living room floor, and having me waited on hand and foot, I knew she was on her way for a visit.

“He soon saw what a mistake he’d made. As the years went on he got to hate me, and couldn’t hide it. He’d kick me about as soon as I’d done something wrong, which I didn’t know I’d done, so after a while I just had to give as good as I got. When I crumbled up fifty of his best cigars I got a good kicking, but it only made me do something else to get my own back. It was ding-dong all the way.

“He turned into a savage, so I got fed up with defying him. You can’t win with somebody like that, so after I was thrown out of school I tried to be as he wanted me to be. It was never good enough, though. He went on criticising, and I couldn’t stand being criticised. If I’m criticised I get worse.”

His eyes were enflamed, lank hair flailing as he shook his head, but he kept the gun at a proper angle. I hoped that whatever drug he’d taken wasn’t the sort that would send him completely off his trolley. “Nobody can take criticism,” I said, as much to myself as to him, wondering whether it was after all better to be shot to death rather than bored to death. Because the silence went on longer than I thought good for me I added: “Life is never easy.”

“You see?” he shouted. “That’s just what my so-called father’s always coming out with. ‘Life is never easy, Malcolm,’ he always says.” He waved the gun, and I thought my time had come. “He says it all the fucking time. It’s the same tune over and over.”

He put out his tongue to wet the tip of his finger, and drew it across his throat. “I’ve had it up to here with him.” I only wished there’d been a superfine Gillette attached.

He went on with a perfect mimicking of Moggerhanger, but it would have been stupid to applaud. “‘I pushed my mother’s mangle when I was three.’ That’s the least I got out of him. But he did no such thing. I went through his secret papers one day and found that his father worked on the railway and earned fair money, till he was caught slitting open registered mail and got sent down for five years. He’d kept the newspaper clippings, and I read them. It left him with a grudge against society that turned him into the crookedest bastard on earth. He never turned his mother’s mangle at any age, not him, though he would have done if shillings had dropped out every time the wheel went round.”

A laugh from me would mean a bullet, and I felt too young to die. Moggerhanger groaned from his armchair, and shouted: “You’re a liar, Malcolm. None of it’s true. I come from a good family!”

Malcolm — I’ll use his real name — told Jericho Jim to keep me in line, then walked calmly to his would-be father and bashed the side of his face with the handle of the gun. I was enraged at him hitting a man — even Moggerhanger — while he was down, but I stayed cool. At least he didn’t empty half the magazine into him — or me — but it was the sort of family party I couldn’t bear being a guest at. It was hard to think what Malcolm in his paranoid state expected to gain by murder, except the rest of his life in Broadmoor, and therefore a new nickname.

Satisfaction at the vicious attack on his helpless father put a terrifying expression on his already demented clock, his mood for further violence suggesting that the next person he’d have a go at would be me, because however many he murdered wouldn’t mean a longer sentence than staying inside for the rest of his life. “You’re shitting yourself, aren’t you, Cullen?”

I wasn’t, though felt too near it for either comfort or pride.

“Yes you are. I can tell. You won’t be Lord-fucking-Moggerhanger’s golden boy much longer.”

I heard a barking which Malcolm, if he registered it, must have thought came from a sheep dog on a nearby farm. “It’s up to you,” I said. “Do what you like.”

“A hero, are you? Moggerhanger’s sort to the end? You’re scum, that’s all I know. And I should know, because I’ve met a lot like you in my life.” He pressed the trigger, an enormous crack, the shell passing almost close enough to sizzle the top of my head. I ducked a couple of feet, at least, which pleased him.

“Nervous, aren’t you?” I was probably white faced as well, and certainly having trouble keeping my legs steady. He might go on playing for hours, hoping to get me on my knees crying for mercy. The time had come to rush him, hoping for a wound rather than death. My idea was to push him across the line of fire from Jericho Jim, who had looked all the time as if not seeing the point of Malcolm’s self-indulgence.

Luckily the noise of the shot brought deliverance, and none too soon, because the remains of the window flew to even smaller pieces, and Dismal’s dark muscular bloodhound length came straight at the maniac’s back, throwing him and his shooter towards me with such force I had to leap clear, though I didn’t stay there long, because while Dismal chewed at Malcolm’s arm like the Hound of the Baskervilles who had been on short commons for a month, I picked the gun up, and Bill got Jericho Jim in such a half-nelson that from the petrification of his simple features I thought he was being choked to death.

“A spot of the old unarmed combat doesn’t come amiss,” Bill said. “I’d have had the shooters off them in two seconds, if I had been you. You were slow, Michael. I think you’d benefit from a refresher course.”

At Malcolm’s screams I pulled Dismal away, rags of jacket in his teeth. “You took your time. What the hell kept you?”

Bill kicked Jericho Jim down, to let him know his place. “Michael, I never expected you to fall into a trap like this. What were you thinking of? I saw you from the bushes through my binoculars, and couldn’t believe my eyes. And you ask what took me so long? Just take that shade of disapproval off your face, and I’ll tell you.”

He gave Jericho Jim another penalty kick and, as if to equalise, a heavy-duty one to Malcolm. “On the way up the hill Dismal caught a pheasant, and I was good-natured enough to let him finish it for his tea. You know how particular he is regarding his messing arrangements. Then I demobilised the intruders’ car parked by the front door. The best mechanic in the world won’t get that going again — but it took time.”

Moggerhanger’s tone when he called me over confirmed sixty years of distress suffered in the last couple of hours. I went to him with some sympathy at his ordeal, while Bill finished searching Malcolm and Jericho Jim, who because of the sudden blitzkreig, allowed him to do so without bother. He gave them a further taste of fist and boot, not that they didn’t deserve it, but mostly to make sure they’d be incapable of harming anyone for a few days. “It’s a case for taking no prisoners,” he winked at me. “I could shoot them while trying to escape, but it’s their luck we’re in a civilised country, and have to abide by the Geneva Convention.”

“The one Dismal’s eyeing so hungrily is our employer’s, son,” I told him, “so don’t give him too much stick.”

“Michael, I can’t abide spite. But what he’s done to Lord Moggerhanger is all the more reason to make the tike fear for his life.” He gave Malcolm another good buffet. “I’ve come across him a time or two in the past, and never liked him. He’s a total scumbag.”

Blood was running down Moggerhanger’s face from a mess of cuts and bruises, and I pulled Dismal away from trying to lick it better. “Get the first aid kit from the kitchen,” he said, “and take that damned dog with you.”

I got back with the medical box and a bowl of water, and told Bill to patch the gaffer up. “You’ve had plenty of experience doctoring walking wounded in the War. Maybe there’s some morphine in it.”

Moggerhanger overheard. “I don’t want any of that. You should know by now I don’t take drugs.”

Malcolm cried on the floor, hands attempting to reach every sore point at once. He’d probably never had such a pasting, not even from Moggerhanger, in spite of all he’d said.

Bill swabbed gently at the boss’s face, dabbed with iodine and plied with plasters. “You’ll be as right as rain soon, sir. They’re not Blighty one’s.”

“That may be so, you fake bloody soldier, but it’s giving me gyp.” He flinched at the treatment, but called me over. “I need a cigar, Michael, from the bureau over there. It used to be locked, but you can get in now.”

“What shall we do with the prisoners, sir?” Bill asked. “Or maybe I should do a bit of debriefing first.”

“Leave that to me. I’ll make them wish they’d never been born. But I owe you. I won’t forget.”

“Thank you, sir. Luckily we had our dog for shock troops.”

“Go easy on that iodine. I don’t want a bath in it.” After he’d lit his cigar, with a shaking hand that needed steadying by me, I went to Alice Whipplegate as she opened her lovely eyes. I leaned over, wondering whether to kickstart her with an orgasm, or give a few easy slaps for recovery. “I can feel myself coming out of it,” she said, “but I feel horribly sick. That vile sadist made me drink a bottle of whisky, or near enough.”

Bill, hearing this, put his medicaments down and strolled to give Malcolm another kick as he was halfway to his feet, so that he fell down again. “I’ll learn you, you tramp, treating a woman like that.”

Nature or nurture, I wouldn’t know, but Malcolm, who had some guts due to a long association with Moggerhanger, shouted: “I’ll get you for that. I’ll find you, wherever you are, you fucking pimp.”

“Fair enough,” Bill said, “but you just try. I’ll tell you where to look, before you start the long walk to London.” He gave him another. “You deserve to do every mile on your hands and knees.”

“Give the weasel some stick, by all means, but leave a bit of him for me.” I marvelled at Moggerhanger’s strength, as he managed the short walk, and shook a big fist with two rings on it at Malcolm’s face: “You ungrateful animal. After all I’ve done for you.” He landed a couple of heavy blows. “I’m in pain, and nobody gets away with that. I haven’t started on you yet.” I shivered to think what would happen when he became nasty — though he turned out to be more merciful than if Malcolm had been his real son.

Alice, weak on her feet, took my arm to stay upright as I walked her onto the terrace, leaving Bill to sort out the debris in the sitting room. “Thank God you came when you did,” she said, “or my liver would have gone bang. And God knows what Parkhurst would have got up to. He and Jericho were waiting when we got here. While Jericho pointed the gun at Lord Moggerhanger, Parkhurst knocked him about terribly. Then he threatened to kill me. I screamed, which was a mistake, because it only made him behave worse. He put on a fiendish look, and made me finish a bottle of whisky. I was so drunk I didn’t care what he did, as long as he didn’t rape me. And he might have done that if you hadn’t come. I owe you as well, as the boss said.”

Concealed by the bushes, a smell of damp soil and wet grass which I hoped might help to clear her faculties, she fell into my arms for a rewarding kiss, until breaking free to retch her guts up. I laid a hand at the small of her back, bending her well over for more throwings. “Get rid of it, then I’ll take you inside for some strong black coffee, like they do in the movies.” The sun, on its way down, showed through clouds drifting over the hills, and at her shivering I put my jacket across her shoulders.

I made coffee for everyone, and took a cup to the dining room, where Moggerhanger was sorting papers from his briefcase. Bill, having set Dismal to guard the prisoners, had done a tolerable job at clearing up. The Chippendales, one on three legs, were out of the fireplace, and the Staffordshire pot dogs (minus heads) languished on the shelf. The cabinet of precious china stood upright, cups back on hooks but every second one missing. A bookcase without its glass housed the racing almanacks, and the Landseer, neatly patched with sellotape, hung on the wall. Everything else had been swept up and placed in two large buckets on the terrace. “All ready,” Bill grinned, putting his jacket back on, “for the CO’s inspection.”

The coffee treatment worked so well that Alice foraged in the kitchen cupboards and the deepfreeze to get something going for supper. Spleen Manor, like all of Moggerhanger’s properties (except Peppercorn Cottage, which was for the lower orders) was well provisioned, perhaps for the day when he had to withstand a siege.

I helped to take plates and cutlery into the dining room. Moggerhanger lifted off his horn-rimmed glasses: “I’m glad to see everybody’s mucking in, and that there aren’t any demarcation disputes.”

Bill, as if not waiting for it to be said that beer was good enough for the other ranks, set out wine glasses for everybody. “Beg to report, sir, the drawing room is in as good a condition as can be expected. You can come and look at it now, but what am I to do about the POWs?”

He got up. “I’d better give them a talking to. I haven’t had a backache like this for a long time.”

“It’s my duty to inform you, sir, that we must respect the Geneva Convention.”

“Get out of my way, you bloody fool,” but his laugh was encouraging, as far as a flake of loving kindness went for his son: “I won’t kill the swine. It would be too good for them.”

“Prisoner, stand up, or you’ll get my boot,” Bill shouted. “Commanding officer present! Stand against the wall. What a bloody shower. Come on, chin in, chest out, stomach in, hands by the seams of your trousers, or your mother won’t know you when you come out of the glasshouse!” He turned to Moggerhanger. “That’s the best I can do with them, sir.”

Dismal tried to push his prisoners back to the floor. “Call that dog off.” Moggerhanger stood before them, not speaking for a while. Poor little Jericho Jim had a hand at his face, waiting for a meaty mauler to start thumping away: “It wasn’t my fault, sir. He made me do it.”

“Shut up, you whining prat,” Malcolm said, looking at Moggerhanger as if he’d never give up wanting to kill him.

“Nobody knows more than me that vengeance is mine,” Moggerhanger told them, “but I hate violence. Violence never did any good, and more often than not it only led to more violence. Now, you two overstepped the mark, and in normal circumstances I would put you where you couldn’t cause any more mischief, but seeing that one of you is my only son — adopted or not — I’m going to let you off with a caution. At the same time I never want to see either of you again. You’ve already got enough bruises from the sergeant-major here, who’s saved me a bit of energy. Get off the premises, before I change my mind and bury you in concrete.”

“I’ve put paid to their transport,” Bill said. “I should have destabilised it in such a way that they’d have had the sort of accident on the motorway from which no man can recover with limbs intact, but at least they’ll have a long walk as far as Ripon.”

Malcolm was testing the waters a bit too bravely on saying: “Can we call a taxi, dad? My shoes aren’t made for walking.”

“So it’s ‘dad’ again, is it?” Moggerhanger, tall and solidly built, looked like a raddled pirate, plasters on both cheeks and the rest of his flesh bruised, waistcoat button less and jacket torn, and as if about to march both of them outside, to walk a specially prepared plank into a sea of acid.

Instead he gave each a weighty smash in the stomach which bent them double: “Out, the pair of you, before I get angry. Straw, see them off the grounds. When you come back use your Desert Rat expertise and peg a tarpaulin over the French windows, in case it rains, which it’s bound to do in this area. Michael, make a cheerful fire in the dining room. There’s central heating, but we’ve got plenty of coal, and it burns well enough, even though it was probably dug out of the earth by children in South America because all our mines are closing down.”

“Just the ticket,” Bill said. “A blaze in the hearth’s good for morale.”

Moggerhanger ignored his remark. “I’m going upstairs to get these rags off my back, and to phone my lovely wife about what happened. I won’t forget to mention all of you in despatches. Alice, put a few bottles of the best champagne in the refrigerator.”

Bill marched his prisoners into a cloud of leaves blowing across the terrace as if scores of butterflies had been let loose. I went back to do my boy scout stuff, chips of the best Chippendales for kindling under coal and logs. By the time Moggerhanger came downstairs, looking a lot more presentable than when he went up, flames were clap-handing so high I hoped the chimney had been recently swept.

Bill sat on a high stool in the kitchen, a whisky in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other, watching Alice at the Aga, while Dismal worried a leg of half-frozen lamb around the floor. Bill picked it up and washed it at the sink to get the saliva off, then put it in a pan for Alice to baste. “I marched them to the road,” he said, “which isn’t very far, but they were limping before they got there. Even a bayonet at the behind wouldn’t have made them go any faster. It’s a shame nobody does National Service anymore. You used to see lots of smart youngsters about, but not these days. Everybody’s as soft as you know what. I can’t think what the country would do in an emergency.”

“People would come up to scratch just as they always have,” Alice said, laying out platters of prawns, anchovies, smoked salmon, and strips of avocado for a first course. “Do you think Lord Moggerhanger will approve of this, and then roast lamb with potatoes, and a green salad? There’ll be tinned fruit and yoghurt for dessert.”

“It’s more than any of us expected,” I said.

“If anybody, with regard to Alice’s magnificent effort, had made such a remark in my platoon,” Bill said, “I would have put them on a charge for defeatism. She’s producing a meal fit for the gods — which is what we deserve.”

Moggerhanger was already at the head of the dining room table when we filed in, gold cufflinks glistening, his solid proprietorial presence weighing us up, a half smile on his complacent juff at having come through the worst experience of his life. He squeezed the top of the champagne bottle, and let the cork smack the ceiling.

Alice, who faced him along the table, wore a navy blue skirt and white blouse, with a frilly bit of muslin at the throat. Her features softened with relief as if only now realising her close-run escape from a serious mishandling by Malcolm. Her unmistakably amorous glance at me led to the hope that I would be able to get into bed with her later.

I sat on Moggerhanger’s left, and Bill placed himself to the right, our suits made as neat as possible after the adventures of the day. Dismal was elongated between me and the fire for warmth, and to be in line for any donated food, though when I slipped him an anchovy he turned his blunt nose up at it.

Moggerhanger, in victory mode, filled our champagne glasses, and my intention of one day getting him packed off to prison, or of distressing him sufficiently to ruin his business, seemed as far away as ever. Not that my heart wasn’t in it, but the festive gathering was too unique to seriously mull on the idea.

He stood to make a toast. “Eating and drinking is the most important thing at the moment, so I’ll be brief, but little did I know on getting here this afternoon that I would have to put up with what I did from such an unexpected quarter. Just think of it. My son, my only son! If I’d been Abraham I would have slit his throat ten times over, no matter what God said. But I didn’t. I let him go. I’m too soft, and in any case what would his mother have said, or the police?”

A few noggins of his special brandy while changing into a lounge suit upstairs had made him maudlin already, and I wondered how long he would go on, because the rest of us were famished.

“If I’d been a priest I would have said the service of the dead over such an ungrateful villain. I’m not a priest, at least, but consider it, anyway. I’ve provided him with everything he cared to ask for. I stinted him nothing. But being disrespectful and treacherous is part of his nature. He’s been like that from infancy. Not only that, he grew up, for reasons I’ll never understand, to have a persecution complex, and we know how people always feel persecuted about the wrong things.

“He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born with two, and one in each hand. If he’d been thrown in the water at birth and hadn’t let go of them (as he wouldn’t, because that was the character he was born with) he’d have sunk without trace, which might have been better for me in the long run, though I expect his generous-hearted mother will go on loving him, and looking after him. Still, that’s how mothers are, and who would want it otherwise?”

The tear that enlarged a vein by one of his bruised eyes, though a sign of human feeling, didn’t stop me thinking him the swine of swine.

“Alice and I have to thank you as our deliverers, and while getting me out of an unpalatable peril shouldn’t go to your heads, we do appreciate your timely appearance. So here’s to Michael, my golden boy no longer in the first shine of youth, and to William Straw (I hate diminutives) a late soldier of His Majesty the King, God bless his soul! — who did his usual workmanlike job.”

Dismal let a corner of the best Axminster fall from his mouth, and growled, so that Moggerhanger, the last man in the world to be slow on the uptake, added: “We also had to admire the assistance of that otherwise bone-idle pooch which Polly trained so well. Which reminds me that at least I have a daughter, even if she does sport the morals of a she-cat at full moon. Now let’s eat, and may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

He drank, and got stuck in. So did we, stuffing ourselves, with champers to swill it down. While Moggerhanger drank he kept the patter going like the guest speaker at a branch of the Spoke and Wheel Club, and we took it all in with enough willingness to keep him going, if not please him.

“When you were standing up to Parkhurst and giving him some lip, Michael, I could tell what was going on in your mind, and must say you had some nerve facing his gun like that. I’ve never known such pluck. I’ve seen men turn to Chivers in that situation.”

I passed the glass to be refilled. “It was in the line of duty, that’s all.”

“Don’t contradict. It’s the sort of pluck this country lacks. There’s none of it about anymore, so it does my heart good when I’m a witness to it, and the beneficiary as well. Where would we be if there was no pluck like that in the world? I ask you.”

He needed no indication that we agreed, the food being good, champagne free and copious (he sent Alice for two more bottles) and Dismal dozing as if after a fair day’s work. Listening in warmth and comfort to Chairman Moggerhanger’s tabletalk was no great hardship.

“As Polly said a long time ago: ‘Never turn your back on a toaster, dad!’—which showed her wisdom at seventeen. She said it in relation to her brother Malcolm as well, so there’s intuition for you. It was sharper than mine, for a while anyway. Malcolm did today what I never dared even think of doing to my own father. A fool doesn’t realise that what you think in that line you should never do, and that the thought itself has to be luxury enough to satisfy.”

His hypocrisy knowing no bounds made it more interesting than not. “I drink to that, sir,” Bill said, with his usual louche wink at me.

“You two chaps came and saved me, though if truth be told it’s not the first mix up I’ve had the luck to escape in the nick of time. Where would I have been without luck? And hard work, of course. People don’t like to work anymore. They look on luck as a God-given right. A superabundance of bullshit is destroying this country. From being a picturesque backdrop to the British character it’s been taken over by the idle poor and the brainless rich. Everybody’s set on outdoing everybody else, without contributing to the public good and the national exchequer.”

If there was anything worse than an angry young man it had to be an angry old man, though he wasn’t all that old. The country didn’t seem in such bad nick to me as Moggerhanger implied, but who could contradict him, or spoil his enjoyment after our close encounter of the day?

“It’s dog eat dog,” he went on, “and no good will come of it. It’s a national disease. There’s too much ignorance, and no respect for anything or anybody. Nobody gets on their knees anymore at the statues of great men who made the country comfortable enough for them to be idle in. They’ve got no gratitude. At school they only learn to worship pop stars and half-starved stick models. I sent my kids to expensive schools, and when they left they couldn’t even spell because the teachers were too idle to teach them. In state schools it would have been even worse.”

His kids had certainly been too dim and bolshie to learn, I thought as, to our amusement, his talk began spinning out of control. At least we hoped that was it. Fingering the regalia across his waistcoat, he went on: “What do they teach kids today?”

As if we knew, though Bill was brazen enough to try a response. “At least they get the three Rs, sir.”

“Oh do they? And do you know what they are? I’ll tell you. Reading, rioting and ’rithmetic! That’s the three Rs for you. And you know why? Because they’ve got to be able to read enough to recognise the stops on the Underground. Secondly, they have to know how to write a bit so that they can splash disgusting graffiti everywhere, ruining nice new buildings and train windows. As for thirdly, which is arithmetic, they need that to reckon up the money from purses and wallets after they’ve been out mugging. That’s modern education for you.”

He seemed fairly drunk, and though he might be disappointed at life now and again getting the upper hand, I imagined he must have a few million stashed in overseas tax havens.

“I mean to say, when it comes down to politics we at this table believe deep down in the same things. We might vote differently at election times, but whoever gets in doesn’t make much difference, because England — bless it — will still keep going in its own immemorial way, for the moment I suppose, no matter what the government does, or at least it will until we have to wear pillbox hats and bow to Mecca on prayer mats. By then, if I’m still alive, though I hope I won’t be, I’ll be manufacturing compasses so that our compatriots will know where east is when they come blind drunk from the pubs at dusk and the ragheads force them to grovel to Allah. There’ll always be a place for an entrepreneur like me, though,” which none of us could doubt.

“When I was young,” he laughed, “I fancied myself as part of the mob on its way to turn the red cock on the Houses of Parliament, but even then I realised that in a year or two I’d stand looking on as the pack of bloody fools went by. I knew as well that in another ten years I’d be behind a machine gun mowing them down. And I would be, if the Mother of Parliaments was in danger. I’ve always had my feet four-square on the ground, even though I do sometimes talk too much.”

When none of us shouted that he didn’t he passed the decanter of brandy, and cigars in a box as large as a coffin. “People don’t know who they are anymore, because the media tells them all the time that they’re different. So they don’t know where they belong. But me, when I get out of bed in the morning and look in the mirror, I know who I am. I know that not only is the face looking back at me mine, but the mirror is as well, and the wall it hangs on, not to mention the house the wall is holding up, and the garden around it.”

Until the mirror cracks, then breaks, and the walls fall apart, and the garden becomes a desert. He had talked himself out, so stood up. “Make merry. You’ve earned it. Help yourselves to the good things of life still on the table — though not for too long, because tomorrow’s another day, and if you live till then there’ll be a fair chance of living forever. But it’s time I got some shut-eye, so that I can face it as well.”

He must have been in pain all through the meal, and I had to admire his stoicism. “He’s one of the old sort,” Bill said, the same thought in my mind. “I wouldn’t care to cross him, unless in my own good time.”

Alice lowered her face towards the cheese plate. “She’s had it,” Bill said.

A hand under her arm, she lifted easily. “I’ll help you upstairs,” I said.

Bill couldn’t resist! “The poor woman’s done in, so no hanky-panky.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not Parkhurst.” I half carried her up the wooden hill and along the corridor, to the same room she’d had on our stay in Spleen Manor three years before. As I let her down on the bed she opened her eyes. “Thank you, Michael. Now undress me. I can’t move a finger.”

What could I do? Feeling no prurience whatsoever — it’s true — I took off her shoes, undipped suspenders to remove her stockings, and untied her pretty little neckerchief before undoing the buttons of her blouse, raising her as little as possible to get her warm arms through the sleeves. Unclipping the bra revealed small soft breasts and suddenly upstanding terracotta nipples on my not being able to resist a glancing kiss for each. I’d hoped she wouldn’t notice, since her eyes were closed, but she opened them, and looked at me, and in her state of exhausted mischievousness said: “Thank you again.”

“That’s all right. I used to be a ladies’ attendant, and I occasionally undressed them in the hope of getting a bonus for my skill at the end of the month.”

She smiled as I drew off her skirt. “I didn’t know a man could be a ladies’ maid.”

“Oh yes. I loved the job. Had it for five years. I started at eighteen, and did two years in college to get a diploma. The course cost a pretty penny, as you can imagine, but Gilbert Blaskin, with his usual generosity, paid the fees. Dressing and undressing a woman was the most difficult part to learn, and a lot of students dropped out after a month or two because they couldn’t get the hang of things. One of the students was thrown off the course because the grooming of his fingernails wasn’t up to scratch.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “The part I excelled in was the pleasuring side, though in a way it was more difficult than anything else. At the beginning we practised on big dummy replicas exported specially from Japan, but at our final exam we had a real woman, an anonymous volunteer from the local community. At the first job after graduation you had to be subtle, and know exactly when the pleasuring was called for. A false move, and you not only lost your situation but your certificate as well.”

I spent as much time as was decent in getting off her satin knickers, but she was naked for only a few moments, because I drew a sheet and blanket up to cover her in case she was chilly. “Oh, Michael, I love your stories. I’ll never forget the one you told me last time.”

“I haven’t finished this one yet. According to your luck the women for your finals could be any age but, as I recall, the one I had was exactly like you, with a similarly interesting face and the same utterly desirable figure. I toyed with her for at least half an hour, and before my fingers went in for the kill, as you might say, she was gasping, and trying to put them there, but I resisted till I was good and ready, and then you should have heard the noise, and seen her thrashing about. She came within seconds. I was awarded a distinction for that, got top marks, and passed out with flying colours. She let herself go so much that she cried out that she was the vicar’s wife. A lot of the other students didn’t do so well, because they all too often made the woman get there sooner than was right. So the orgasm didn’t last long and wasn’t as intense, or as high on the dial of the orgasm meter as mine, which was taken into account, as it should have been.

“It was drummed into us,” I went on, at the movement of her hands and her enlarging eyes, “that every square inch of a woman’s flesh is erogenous, and there was a chart on the wall in the college lecture room to show the erogenous zones from one to ten, and I memorised it quicker than anyone else. The nape of the neck was very important, as were the woman’s lips, but they rated about two on the scale. Then you got to the breasts and nipples, which took the score up a bit — to three or four — as did the insides of warm and silky thighs. You ascended by various degrees to the woman’s behind, and finally worked slowly to the clitoris which, naturally, rated ten out of ten. Maybe I’ve left a few choice items out, but they usually come back when I go into action, because I always have that chart before my eyes while attending to a woman. My experiences after doing such a course have always stood me in very good stead, as you might imagine. Anyway, now that I’ve convinced you that men can be ladies’ maids, let me tuck you in so that you can get some well-earned sleep. Then you’ll wake up fresh and energetic in the morning. I can go into greater detail for you some other time.”

Her eyes were wide open, and far from sleep. “Not on your life,” she murmured. “Now you can do some post-graduate work on me.”

Truth to say, I was fully as ready for it as she was, and an hour later, after being afraid a time or two that her cries would reach Moggerhanger, she fell asleep in my arms. I hadn’t intended to seduce her but, hearing no complaint afterwards — as how could I? — I was happy at having had the privilege. As she was drifting away I wondered whether to get a divorce from Frances and marry Alice, but knew that such uxorious speculation had little reality so close to making wholly satisfying love. Maybe I should sell the method of seduction to Blaskin, I thought, but decided it was far too good for him, who would in any case only use it in one of his trashy novels.

I disenveloped myself from Alice’s arms when she was far into sleep and, knowing nothing could wake her, made sure she was well tucked in for warmth. Glancing at my watch, I was surprised that it wasn’t yet midnight.