‘I didn’t know.’
‘Haven’t you noticed, when you go into an estate agent’s office, a distinct reek of cats? It’s not unpleasant, because they’re very well housed. My job is to feed them, clean out their boxes and keep the log up to date.’
Phyllis finished off the buttered brown bread. ‘Log?’
I poured more wine. They knew how to knock it back. ‘A cat-log, in which is recorded the date, time, place and results of whenever the cat is taken out to be swung in a room to see how big it is.’
Ettie pressed her hands together. ‘Isn’t it cruel?’
‘Well, no, not on a strict rota basis it isn’t. And they’re used to it. It’s their life. They like the outings and look forward to the excitement. They only get used every two or three days. Not all clients argue about the size of a room, in any case. But if one expresses any doubt, or if we anticipate an argument we put the duty cat into the box and take him along. They’re very intelligent. If the room’s not big enough to swing a cat in, they’re wonderful at missing the walls and avoiding bits of fireplace. They set up a meeow like a radar set to indicate that the room’s too small, and then it goes back in the box. Once, though, when I was coming through the fishmarket old Whiskers got out. He leapt out of the bag, you might say. As to how I eventually got him back, that’s a story for another day. I might tell it when the steak arrives.’
We finished the white, and the red came. ‘Enjoying it?’
‘Marvellous.’
Ettie’s mouth was too full to speak, so she nodded. They half believed my cat nonsense, and if Phyllis didn’t I could tell she liked me for taking the trouble to spin it. I half regretted not having worked such an idea into Blaskin’s shit-novel, but you can’t think of everything. The food and wine put some colour into Phyllis, and I stroked her cheek with my middle left finger. ‘You’re the most splendid person I’ve ever met.’
It was obvious she had never been called splendid before, because her eyelashes went like butterfly wings. ‘I have a remote and charming little place called Peppercorn Cottage. One day we’ll go there, you, me, Ettie as well as Huz and Buz. It’s the most peaceful house you can imagine. How much longer are you both going to work at the Groundnut Café?’
‘I’ve got to earn my living,’ Ettie said.
I offered them a brandy.
‘Are you married?’ Phyllis said, ‘or aren’t you?’
‘Separated.’ I saw no reason not to tell.
‘Life’s hard,’ she said. ‘I sometimes wonder how I can go on. I can’t explain it, really.’
‘Don’t, then.’ I ordered brandy and coffee, and lit a cigar. ‘I tried to kill myself last year. I took an overdose of opium, but it didn’t work. Then I hanged myself and the rope snapped. Next, I shot myself, and missed. So I decided it wasn’t for me to take my own life.’ I’d had my bellyful with Bridgitte often wondering how much longer she could go on with her so-called dreadful existence, and I wasn’t going to take the same crap from a woman I’d treated to an expensive meal which she had eaten with sufficient gusto to suggest she intended living forever. Ettie just looked, knowing Phyllis had said the wrong thing. It was getting harder to choose the one I would go to bed with. Both, I decided, stroking Ettie’s arm so that she wouldn’t feel hard done by. ‘I love to see you eating all that rich food.’
She’ll be telling me she’s pregnant next, I said to myself.
‘It’s because I’m pregnant,’ she said.
‘Don’t say such things, for God’s sake.’
She laughed, a wicked little weaselly laugh. ‘I can be a better liar than you, if I put my mind to it.’
Phyllis was warbling with laughter again. I told them more about the beauties of Peppercorn Cottage, till the bill came, when I put on a serious face, just to let them know they were having a good time.
Darkness had been switched on outside, a feeble glitter of blue between rooftops. Phyllis held one arm as we walked along, and Ettie took the other. Noises had softened, and on a quiet corner of the network of main drags even the trilling of pigeons could be heard — if you had ears as sharp as mine.
‘I can’t tell you how much your company means to me.’ My words could apply to either of them. ‘On an evening like this.’ After ten dull years with Bridgitte at Upper Mayhem I was falling in love with every woman I swapped six words with. I was starting to live again, except that getting entangled with Moggerhanger might mean I was going to die.
‘I’m having a wonderful time,’ Phyllis said. ‘But I’m a little bit tiddly.’
‘I am, as well,’ laughed Ettie.
I kissed her on the cheek. ‘What we need is a drink.’ We wandered up a darkened street off Long Acre, past Stanford’s map shop, turned a few more corners and came to something like a warehouse with a light over the door and a notice that pulled me up short: ‘Ronald Delphick, Poet Lariot, Reading Tonite. Admish: One pound.’
Phyllis made a motion of rolling up her sleeves.
‘We’re going in,’ I told them, ‘but he’s mine.’
Ettie ran up the stairs. ‘Don’t spoil my fun.’
He was already reading, but we pushed our way in and sat on a wooden form among a few dozen other people. We couldn’t help making a clatter, and Phyllis giggled as they moved their legs to let us get by. Delphick stood on a stage, a hand on his panda’s head. ‘I hate people who come in late, but at least it’s another three quid.’
They laughed. He wouldn’t be so glad when he saw who it was. ‘“Dusk Queen”,’ he said, ‘is the title of the next poem. I hate titles, but my public insists, so here goes. I hate my public, though I’ve got no option but to love them. I dedicate the poem — I hate dedications also, but what the hell —’ more laughs — ‘to Prue, a generous little girl I once met, and don’t suppose I’ll meet again because she’s undergoing psychiatric treatment, though to be fair to myself, she would have been, anyway, sooner or later.’
‘Get on with it, Ronald,’ a bearded man shouted.
‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, or two rather.’ He read each line as if it was a whole poem, sufficient space between the words so that he could get his breath — the same poem he’d let me have just before dropping him off near Stevenage, though it sounded better now.
He stopped long enough for us to know it was the end, so that we could cheer. ‘What bullshit,’ I said in Ettie’s ear.
She stabbed me in the ribs. ‘Shut up. It’s wonderful.’
Everyone clapped, and so did I.
‘I wrote that at Doggerel Bank.’ He was breathless with emotion. ‘That’s the place where I live, or exist, rather, on the pittance I earn as a poet. But when I cut my throat, not having eaten for three days, I’ll leave it to the National Trust. They can run it as the Delphick Museum, where my fans can come and mourn. My few belongings will be laid out here and there.’ He took a paper from his sugarbag jacket. ‘And this is what they’ll find. I dedicate this list to the farmer who lets me have the cottage at five pounds a year. It’s the least I can do because I haven’t paid him since I started living there.’ Phyllis was choking with mirth. Everyone clapped, and he hadn’t yet read the list. Ettie looked adoringly in his direction, and I wondered what had really gone on between them at The Burnt Fat service station on the Great North Road.
‘Of course, it’s not a shopping list. That would be too long to read. It’s not a laundry list. That would be too short to bother about. It’s a list of absolute essentials, which is just about right.’
There was a pause in which he gave us time to think about his eloquence and contemplate the honour still to come. ‘Well, the list I’m going to read begins like this. I must explain that it’s only the first draft. In fact I’m still making some of it up, which gives an insight into the poetic process of yours truly.