‘She already has a complex,’ said Punk-two.
‘I say, Claud, get me a drink,’ said Lady Moggerhanger.
‘Nothing’s ever any good unless you have two of it,’ he said. Then he saw me. ‘Michael! Come here, you naughty boy!’ He didn’t only push the finger with the bloodstone ring on it, but his whole hand, which I shook. Pressures were genuine and hearty. ‘I’m glad to see you, let me tell you. You’re always close to me, you know that. I was more than glad to know you’d extricated yourself from that Canada business. I knew you would, otherwise I couldn’t have sent you. But you’re a bit silly not to come straightaway for your debriefing, though I did understand you wanted a rest first. Anybody would have re-entry problems after a trip like that.’
Punk-two indicated me. ‘Who is he?’
‘My chief courier.’ He was an emperor awarding promotion on the battlefield.
Punk-one, as quick as a flash, gave me her card. ‘Do you want to write a book?’
‘No,’ I said. Moggerhanger looked happy at my correct response. ‘In my job I sign the Official Secrets Act, and it’s for life.’
‘He could do it, though,’ he said. ‘He’s got it in him. I’ll bet he’d win a prize if he did.’
‘The Moggerhanger Prize,’ said Punk-one.
Punk-two spilled her champagne with excitement. ‘I say, that’s a wonderful idea, Jane. What do you say, Lord Moggerhanger?’
He was in a good mood, because it was his first literary party, as it was mine. ‘That depends. If it’s a money prize, forget it. But if I can pay in club memberships, or a stolen motor, or forged book tokens, or an ikon one of my lads got from Russia for a pair of tights, we might be able to talk about it.’
He was surrounded by the laughter of fairly young women, but even young men were turning to look. Punk-one came back leading a waitress with a tray of champagne glasses. Polly Moggerhanger took one, and saw me.
‘It’s been a long time,’ I said.
She tried to smile, and succeeded. ‘You haven’t altered — physically.’
‘You haven’t changed either, I’m sure.’ Her hair was just as black, her face fuller but paler. Her lips were as shapely and her figure had ripened. ‘In fact, you’re lovely. I was in love with you, and still am. You haven’t been out of my mind since all those years ago, but I’ve been out of my mind at not seeing you.’
She was a real Moggerhanger, as hard as nails. It was she who had connived with her old man in getting me sent to prison, and I thought that if I could get her put inside as well as him at some future date I wouldn’t hesitate. Otherwise I would settle for giving her a smack across the chops just hard enough not to loosen any of the perfect teeth which I saw when she smiled. ‘You never got in touch with me, though, did you? I often thought of you as well, and was always hoping to see or hear from you.’
‘I’d heard you were married.’
Her laugh carried all over the room, in spite of the noise, and Punk-one looked at her so lovingly I thought she would try to talk her into writing a book as well. ‘When did you let that stop you?’
‘Or you were busy having a kid. I forget which. But I’ll be around more from now on. Where do you live?’
‘Not far from Daddy. On Pipe Road, number twenty-three.’
‘I don’t even know your married name.’
‘My divorce came through last week. It’s the same as it was before.’
‘Convenient.’
‘We like it better that way.’ She touched my hand. ‘But I must circulate, and meet Mr Blaskin.’
‘Don’t,’ I said, horrified.
‘Don’t? Listen, I fuck who I like. And don’t you forget it.’
‘I’ll try not to.’
I turned from the next pointless conversation and bumped into my mother.
‘Don’t you know me, then?’ She kissed me and I hugged her tightly on the understanding that if I did any less I would have her following me around. It was almost seven o’clock and I had a date with Ettie and Phyllis at half past. All the same, my instinct told me to run, though not because I didn’t love her. In fact, when I banged into the startling wild-haired creature I thought she was just another appurtenance to the publishing profession, and only her brassy hilarity prevented me from assuming she was Punk-three. In that fatal few-seconds flash between first sight and the death of perception which comes from recognition, I saw this willowy, sallow-faced, attractive, well-worn forty-year-old (she was fifty-five) to whom I was about to say a few flirtatious words before making my way to someone else. ‘Gilbert told me you were back.’
Her beads rattled. ‘I’ve just been talking to him, but he told me to fuck off. He’s got some hopes. He was chatting up that syphilitic racketeer Lord Moggerhanger. I don’t know what he wants out of him. He’s the biggest whoremonger in Europe.’ Punk-one and Punk-two were standing by, but Moggerhanger was too far off to hear. ‘I came all the way back from that lesbian commune in Turkey to be present at my husband’s twenty-fifth book party, and the prick-head tries to ignore me.’
She took a glass of champagne from a tray swaying by like a magic carpet, and drank it like sherbet, then grabbed another. Dark hair crinkled down her shoulders, and her kind of beige sack dress was festooned with clinging gew-gaws. She asked how Bridgitte was, and I told her the score. ‘You lucky bleeder,’ she laughed. ‘Bridgitte was always too good to live with you. How are you going to support yourself now?’
‘I’m working for Moggerhanger.’
She put the champagne glass into a haversack decorated with CND symbols. ‘Well, if you go to prison like you did last time, don’t write and tell me. Only don’t let him send you to Turkey and get you put in jail there. You may be my son, but I wouldn’t like that. I used to belong to the Society for Cutting Up Men, but now I belong to the Society for Cutting Up Turks, and that means most Englishmen as well.’
Punk-one interposed her presence. ‘Can I introduce myself?’
My mother put an arm round her. ‘Any time, love. Do you want me to write a book?’
I slid away. My intention had been to cut it fine by leaving at seven twenty-five and taking a taxi to meet Ettie and Phyllis, but at seven fifteen I heard a loud shrill voice: ‘And you couldn’t fuck half a pomegranate stuck in a lift door!’
What was I to do? Pull her away and take her home? Such a suggestion would earn me a champagne glass thrown in my direction, which is what happened to Blaskin. The scuffle sounded like someone sandpapering the floor. A circle opened. People were shouting, but above all came Blaskin’s wounded roar: ‘I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you!’
He was blind Samson pulling out the props. An unliterary silence cleared the room even of tinkling glass. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, ‘or I’ll kill you.’
‘Put that glass down.’
‘Show me you love me, then.’
‘Did I ever love anyone else?’
‘You might be a writer,’ she shouted, as if just back from her elocution lesson, ‘but you’re an upper-class twit to me. You stick pins in people to make ’em jump, so’s you can write about ’em. Right now you’re writing your twenty-sixth. I know you, prick-head! I can see that little tape-recorder going behind your left eyelash.’
His moan ascended to a scream. ‘You push me back into the slime!’
‘It’s where you belong, you arse fucker. That’s all you ever wanted.’
A great Oooooh! went up.
‘That was to stop you becoming a lesbian,’ he threw back.
‘Any woman’s a lesbian who lays eyes on you.’