Mrs Pargeter’s Plot

∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧

Ten

Mrs Pargeter always found that a bottle of champagne eased most potentially sticky situations, and the rest of her conversation with Fossilface O’Donahue was not likely to be the most relaxed social encounter she had ever experienced, so she made the relevant call to Room Service. She asked her guest to wait in the bedroom while the waiter delivered the bottle; she didn’t want Hedgeclipper Clinton to know that Fossilface was in the hotel until she had found out a little more about the thug’s intentions.

His plea for forgiveness had sounded genuine enough, but she still wasn’t quite sure. There was something about his manner that seemed to breathe psychopathology.

They sat down with an unconvincing air of cosiness either side of a highly polished table. On the floor across the room, Erasmus, exhausted by his attempts to escape, had fallen asleep.

Fossilface drained his first glass of champagne as if he was participating in a speed trial, and Mrs Pargeter politely topped him up again. “Now tell me all about it,” she said comfortably.

“Well… the fact is…” he rumbled. “I done wrong.”

“Yes, but after all that time in prison, surely you can feel that you’ve paid your debt to society and that you’re ready to start a new life?”

“That is certainly true, Mrs Pargeter, that is certainly true. But the fact is, I still done wrong to various individuals what haven’t been paid back yet.”

“Paid back?” she echoed, slightly alarmed.

“Yes. Paid back in full for what I done them out of over the years.”

“Ah.”

“You see, when I was in prison, Mrs Pargeter, I had, like, a mystical experience…”

“Oh?”

“Which made me think about everything what’d happened in my life, like, hither-from… you know, like, up to that point in time…”

“Right.”

“I had, like, a convergence.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. Just like St Paul on the road to Domestos.”

“Ah.”

“One evening I was sitting eating my supper when this geezer, who was one of the real hard men in the nick – ‘Chainsaw Cheveley’ he was called – don’t know if you know him…?”

“No,” Mrs Pargeter admitted.

“You got any sense, you’ll keep it that way. Well, on this occasion I’d rubbed old Chainsaw Cheveley up the wrong way, and he grabbed hold of a jug of custard and he upturned it over my head… You ever had a jug of custard upturned over your head, Mrs Pargeter?”

“No. No. I haven’t, actually.”

“Well, it’s not pleasant, let me tell you, not pleasant. For a start, it was dead hot. I mean, most of the nosh you get in the nick is, like, lukewarm at best, but – just my luck – this custard was really steaming. And it poured down all over my eyes, so I couldn’t see nothing. And I thought, Chainsaw Cheveley is not long for this life. I mean, nobody does that kind of thing to Fossilface O’Donahue and gets away with it. I reckoned I’d pick up one of the chairs – they was metal, tubular jobs – and bash the living daylights out of him. Probably mean another charge and a longer sentence, but I didn’t care. You know, when my rag’s up, I don’t think about things like that, never have done.

“So I reached my hands up to wipe the custard out my eyes and… then it happened.”

“What happened?” asked Mrs Pargeter.

“It was like there was this yellowish, golden kind of light glowing round everything I saw.”

“Ah. Are you sure it wasn’t just the custard?”

“No, no, it was different from that. It was like more sort of… what’s the word? Urethral?”

“Ethereal?” Mrs Pargeter suggested.

“Yes, that’s probably it. Anyway, everything, like, glowed golden and, through the custard, I seemed to hear this voice…” He paused, distracted by the memory.

“Who was it?” she prompted. “Chainsaw Cheveley?”

“Nah, nah, it was, like…” He looked a little sheepish. “I know this sounds daft… but I reckon it was an angel.”

“An angel?”

“Yeah.”

“What did the voice say?”

“It said: ‘Fossilface O’Donahue, you done wrong. You been a bad person. You’ve hurt people. You’ve never had no sense of humour about nothing. You gotta make restitooshun’.”

“‘Restitooshun’?”

“Restitooshun,” he confirmed gravely.

“And you say this was an angel?”

“I reckon it was. I mean, I couldn’t, like, see anyone, but I reckon it was an angel, yes.”

“You don’t think it could have been just Chainsaw Cheveley having you on?”

He shook his head decidedly. “No way. Chainsaw Cheveley’s never been heard to utter a sentence of more’n two words. He couldn’t have spouted all that lot, no way.”

“Ah. So what did you do?”

“Well, immediately, I shook Chainsaw Cheveley by the hand, and I said, ‘Thank you, mate, from the bottom of my heart!’”

“And what did he do?”

“He hit me with his spare fist. He thought I was only shaking his hand to make a move on him, you see.”

“So what did you do then?”

“I turned the other cheek.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And so then he punched me on that one, and all.”

“And you still didn’t hit him back?”

“No way. From that moment I was, like, a changed man. You know, they say the leopard can’t change his stripes, but that’s exactly what I done. From that moment I decided I would devote the rest of my life to making restitooshun to those what I done wrong to.”

“How long ago did this experience happen?”

“Well, about three years, but I couldn’t do nothing about it while I was still in the nick, like. I mean, I could make myself be nice to my fellow inmates, but I couldn’t sort out none of the blokes outside. Mind you, I could make plans for what restitooshun I’d make once I was a free man again. I thought of all the people what I done wrong to.”

“Oh yes?”

“There’s a lot of them. Your husband, like I said… Truffler Mason… Concrete Jacket… That Gary, the getaway driver… Keyhole Crabbe… do you know him?” Mrs Pargeter nodded, and Fossilface continued piously, “They was all going to need some restitooshun. And Hedgeclipper Clinton, and all.”

“So was tying Hedgeclipper and his receptionist up part of the ‘restitooshun’?”

“Well, no, I haven’t got on to his restitooshun yet. I’m still working on yours – or rather your husband’s… if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t, but she felt this wasn’t the moment to ask for an explanation. “So what else have you been doing for the last three years?”

“I been working on changing my personality,” he replied.

“Oh yes. How did you set about doing that?”

He smiled proudly. “I went to see the chaplain. Never had any of that God stuff when I was a nipper, so I got him to take me through the whole business, right from the start… you know, the Garden of Eton, the whole number, right up to the Crucifaction and the Reservation… And I got him to give me books to read.”

“What – like the Bible?”

“Well, yes, a few like that, but more of them was joke books.”

“Joke books?”

“That’s right. Because, you see, it’s like what the angel said. Not only had I done wrong, but also I never had no sense of humour. That’s what distinguishes man from the animals, the chaplain said – a sense of humour.”

“Well, it’s a point of view.”

“So I been working the last three years to build up my sense of humour.”

“From the joke books?”

“Yes.” He nodded with satisfaction, then coughed. “Do you know the joke about the nervous wreck?”

“No, I don’t believe I do,” said Mrs Pargeter.

Fossilface O’Donahue chuckled. “This’ll kill you, really will. Dead good, this one. I spent most of the past three years practising telling jokes, you know.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. All right, so here goes.” He cleared his throat again. “What lies on the bottom of the ocean and shivers?”

“Amaze me,” said Mrs Pargeter.

“A nervous wreck!” Fossilface O’Donahue pronounced ecstatically, and burst into a deep rumble of laughter.

Mrs Pargeter joined in politely, though she thought he might still have a little way to go in his joke-telling technique. Fossilface wasn’t yet quite ready for the professional stand-up comedy circuit.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “Dead good.” Mrs Pargeter smiled encouragingly. “No,” he went on, “the chaplain told me… you go about your daily life with a sense of humour and people are bound to warm to you.”

“I’m sure they will.”

“So that’s what I’ve been working on – my sense of humour. Making sure that everyone who meets me leaves with a smile on their face.”

“What an appealing idea.”

“Mm.” He waved the plastic clown mask at her. “I thought this’d give you a good laugh.”

“Oh.”

He looked disappointed. “Didn’t, though, did it? It seemed almost like you was scared of it, rather than amused by it.”

“Well, yes, of course all jokes depend for their effect on the mood of the person they’re told to, don’t they?” she said judiciously. “And the occasion.”

“Yeah. So, another time, if you was, like, in the right mood, you’d’ve thought this mask was dead funny?”

“Yes, I’m sure I would, Fossilface.”

The nickname had slipped out unintentionally. Mrs Pargeter held her breath for a second, waiting for the, reaction, but was relieved to see a smile split his craggy features.

“Good. That’s what I want to do, you see – leave people with smiles on their faces.”

“Very nice too.”

“My aim is to, like, suddenly appear from nowhere, do the restitooshun to the geezers what I done wrong to, then vanish off again.” He chuckled throatily. “Sort of like the Loan Arranger.”

“Sorry?”

“That’s another joke I learnt from one of the books while I was in the nick. This bloke, see, he goes to the bank, and there’s this other bloke sitting at a desk with a black mask on… I mean, the bloke’s got the mask on, not the desk.”

“Right.”

“And the bloke – this is the first bloke, I mean the one who come in – he says to another bloke – this is not the one sitting at the desk with the mask on…”

“It’s a third bloke, in fact.”

“It is. You got it, right, a third bloke. Anyway, this bloke – the one who’s come in – he asks the other bloke – not the one with the mask on his desk, that is, the third one – he asks him: ‘Oo’s that bloke over there?’ This is the one with the mask he’s asking about now, right?”

“Right.”

“So the other bloke – this is the third one now…”

“I’m with you.”

“He says: ‘That bloke’s our Mortgage Department. He’s the Loan Arranger!’”

Fossilface O’Donahue rumbled with laughter at his punch-line, and Mrs Pargeter too managed to summon up a little chuckle. “Very good, very good.”

“Yeah, well, the trick with jokes,” he confided, “doesn’t lie in the joke itself…”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No, it’s not the jokes – it’s the way you tell them.”

“Ah.”

“I been practising that, and all.”

“Oh, it shows, it shows.”

“Yes. You know, I’m really working on this sense of humour business.”

“So I can see.”

“And I’m going to use it in the way I make restitooshun to the people what I done wrong to.”

“Oh really?” said Mrs Pargeter, unable to disguise the edge of anxiety in her voice. She didn’t relish the loose cannon of Fossilface O’Donahue’s sense of humour coming anywhere near her.

“You bet. For instance, do you know what I done wrong to your husband?”

“No.” Mrs Pargeter wasn’t sure that she actually wanted to know.

“I cheated him out of five hundred nicker.”

“Oh dear. Well, I’m sure he would have forgiven you for –”

“Oh no, he’s going to get restitooshun for it all right – or, actually, you’re going to get restitooshun for it.”

“Thank you,” Mrs Pargeter murmured weakly.

“In fact, you already got it.”

“Have I?”

“Yes. You are the proud recipient of the first bit of restitooshun what I done since I come out…”

“Lucky me.”

“… and you’re the first one to experience the full effect of my sense of humour.”

“Really?”

“So what do you think of it, eh?”

Mrs Pargeter was perplexed. “I’m sorry. I’m not quite with you. You’ll have to explain.”

Gleefully, Fossilface O’Donahue did as he was requested. “I done your old man out of five hundred… What’s the slang for five hundred?”

It became horribly clear. “A ‘monkey’?” she suggested with resignation.

“Exactly,” a triumphant Fossilface confirmed.

Mrs Pargeter looked down at Erasmus, sleeping in his circle of debris on the carpet. “Oh yes,” she said. “Very amusing.”