They were five minutes from Leonardo’s when Mathew stopped the car abruptly and reversed so that he could look down a particular alleyway, then swore in terms that even Harriet, making time with musicians from the far corners of the world, had rarely heard.
“You stay here a bit,” Mathew told his future wife. “I just need to straighten my tie.”
And then he got out of the car and walked into the night.
Jonah Noblewhite—at this point, Mathew only thought of him as “the tubby bloke”—had his back to the wall and a short length of wood clutched in his hands. He looked like a cornered guinea pig. In front of him stood three men with shaven heads. One of them had a swastika tattooed on the back of his neck, which Mathew considered very thoughtful, as it gave him something to aim for with his billy club. The blackshirt went down on one knee, which was impressive, as most people just fell over unconscious. Mathew reckoned he still had the initiative, so he hit him again, with interest. The remaining two stared at him, and Jonah Noblewhite took the opportunity presented to cudgel the man closest to him with his chunk of wood.
The third man was fast. He stepped in and smashed Jonah twice with his elbow, once up, and once down. Jonah collapsed.
Mathew looked at the third man. He looked at his heavy, ugly boots and his studded denim jacket. He looked at his narrow face and almost invisible eyebrows.
He obviously didn’t see much to write home about.
The man dipped one hand into his pocket and produced a knife. Mathew looked at the knife. That didn’t seem to interest him very much, either. The man set himself in a crouch, the blade weaving. Mathew stayed exactly where he was, knees not locked, dancing shoes steady in the alley’s grime. Then he spoke.
“Mucker,” he said, “at this moment, you and I are having a little local disagreement. Your friends will shortly wake up and you can all go to the pub, although you’ll want to find one which isn’t in my manor. But if you have a go at me with that pig-sticker, I will take exception.”
He did not specify the consequences of his taking exception. He waited, with his hands at his sides. At some point, he shifted just slightly, giving the other a view of his pale silk shirt and of the snub-nosed revolver in its holster at his hip.
Twenty minutes later, Jonah Noblewhite joined Harriet and Mathew for dinner, and it emerged that he collected American baseball cards and was a fan of Joan Greenwood. Harriet had declared him the sweetest man in the world, and had fastened her grip upon Mathew’s hand and clearly did not intend ever to let him go. He was a hero and a warrior and he protected the good from the wicked. A week later, Mathew proposed, and Jonah was the first person they told. When Joshua Joseph was born, Jonah pronounced him a great scion of the British people, and shortly thereafter, finding himself by coincidence charged with the care of a newborn boy and girl, suggested that the Heir of the House of Spork might relish the company of his two castaways. The three grew up together as a matter of inevitability, though Mary Angelica was somehow aloof from the two boys, and life whisked her away to a foreign school just as she began her transformation from gosling to swan.
And now, it seems, Joshua Joseph Spork has just had steamy, athletic, back-arching, chemical-waste-train sex with Mercer’s sister.
The blissful doze recedes from him. Joe Spork lies looking at Polly Cradle’s ceiling, then gazes at her. Her face in repose is beautiful, with just a quirk of mischief around the wide mouth. She snuffles, and Joe has a profound urge to bury his nose in her neck, wake her with his lips. He contents himself with inhaling her scent, and closes his eyes for a moment.
He wakes again a little later, and finds that she has rolled over on her side. The cello sweep of her back is exposed. He pulls the blankets up over her, and she makes a small, happy squeak. Content, but now very much awake, he slips out of bed and wanders. On her bookshelves: a generous selection of crime novels, a spread of P.G. Wodehouse, and a selection of erotica notable for its breadth and gusto.
He turns on the kettle, thinking he will make her tea, and absently glances at the Nokia handset he carries reluctantly for business. A picture of an envelope is sitting in the grey corner of the display: voicemail. He nudges the retrieve button with his thumbnail, and winces as it presses back. The phone seems to have been made—actually, they all do—for an elf or a pixie. For a Polly Cradle, perhaps. He feels like a troll. Big bad troll, in a cave. He has kidnapped a maiden and wrought his wicked will upon her. Grr. Arg. Soon the villagers will come, with pitchforks, and all will be well again.
He thinks about the figures who came to visit and the ones who were waiting for him. Shadows. Inquisitors.
Ruskinites.
He listens to the message.
“Joseph? Joseph, it’s Ari, from the corner shop. You’re being burgled! Or you have been late with your rent. There are men here with a truck. They’re taking everything. Or are you moving house? You did not tell me. I don’t know whether to call the police. What should I do? My daughter is frightened. She says she saw a witch in the back of their truck, a spider witch all in black. It is very unpleasant here, I think you should come. Or call me, Joseph, please.”
“Oh, dear,” Polly Cradle says a few moments later, “I had thought we could avoid this part.”
Joshua Joseph Spork, caught red-handed—or rather red-footed—fully dressed at three p.m. and about to go out of the door of her house, blushes from crown to chin.
“The whole point of that conversation we had was to assure you that—” She peers at him. Her hair hangs a little over her face, but he can see genuine alarm in the portion of it which is visible. Whatever irritation she feels on finding him sneaking out is failing to bite, finding no purchase in her heart. It is already too full with something which is almost worse—a kind of confusion which comes from the contemplation of things which are very strange and very new. Polly Cradle, at this moment, is struggling to understand a world she had thought she knew. Joe Spork, by comparison, is an open book. A moment later, she snaps her fingers and glowers at him.
“Oh, bloody Hell!” she says. “I’m an idiot! You weren’t sneaking out on me, at all. You were sneaking out on Mercer. You were going to do all the things he told you not to.” And to his amazement, the look on her face now is relief. Then she frowns again.
It had not, in fact, occurred to Joe Spork that his vanishing might be attributed to moral cowardice regarding sex. Only five heartbeats ago—and his heart is beating very fast—when he saw Polly Cradle’s lower lip between her (delicious) teeth, did he suddenly consider what hurt she might take from his clandestine departure, and on the heels of this realisation came an urge to repentance and explanation which was still in fullest flood when she short-circuited that part of the argument—he is fairly sure this is about to be an argument—by divining in a flash his true purpose.
“You are a putz,” Polly says. “You are a lemon. Also a blockhead, a dimwit, a dunce, a ninny, a nitwit, and a nincompoop.” She pauses. “Nin-com-poop! You have one of the best lawyers in London looking after you and you propose to ignore him. You have a safe place to be and you want to go into danger. And you propose to do all this and leave me behind?” She punches him, not gently, on the shoulder. “You…” she can’t find the right word “… fool!” It’s considered a mild description, these days, but it comes out of her mouth with real weight, and Joe hangs his head. “Well, never mind. Let’s go.”