His look of vulnerability encouraged me to say quite sharply: “You told us we needn’t be here till six, and it’s nowhere near that yet.”
Eyes swivelled on murmuring: “Parkhurst!”
I laughed. “What makes you think you’re going there? You’ll be all right.” There were worse places than the Isle of Wight I wanted to send him to. Any notion of letting him descend into the bowels of the judicial system were put aside only because I hadn’t been the one to reduce him to his present condition.
He slumped in a half faint, head lolling, then came back, eyes angry as if trying to tell me something else. Loyalty was a quality I’d never much valued, yet the old rogue was in trouble, and maybe it was up to me to help now that he was down. You can let him stew for a while, though, I said to myself, about to go and ask Bill to give me a hand at the biggest Sidney Blood picnic we’d ever been invited to. What a chapter it would make for Blaskin.
Parkhurst Moggerhanger stood in the doorway, and the gun pointing at me was no replica. “I’ve only half murdered the fucker,” he said, “but I enjoyed it so much I’m saving the rest for later. Then it’ll be your turn, Cullen, you bigheaded interfering bastard.”
“How can you do this? He’s your father,” was all that seemed necessary to say, but like the stupid pillock I was, because when Moggerhanger had mentioned Parkhurst he had only been trying to warn me about his son, and I hadn’t taken it in.
“You think that makes a difference?” Parkhurst shouted.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “But do it so’s I can see.”
“You think I won’t?” He wiped spit from his lips. “I’ve dreamed of this ever since I was at that posh boarding school he sent me to at six. He’s not my real fucking father. He picked me out of an orphanage as if it was Battersea Dogs’ Home when I was two because he wanted a mascot. He hoped I’d grow up to be just like him.”
He was a frightening sight, and intimidating now that he had a gun on me. His eyes were bloodshot, hair dull and lank, his jacket ripped at the lapels. I’d always known him as another depraved specimen who thought that all the ills of his life were the fault of his father, when he’d been born with the lamp of evil shining all too brightly enough inside.
I knew he hadn’t done much damage to Moggerhanger by himself, and my assumption was right, on seeing Jericho Jim come in from the terrace and stand by his side, a sawn-off little relic if ever there was one, the least intelligent runt of Moggerhanger’s entourage, whom Parkhurst had obviously suborned into this stylish but insane stunt. Mogg had always prided himself on spotting those who would give him loyalty unto death, but I’d never believed in his quirky intuition from the moment he set eyes on me and thought I could be one of them. And now overconfidence had turned into his downfall.
My thoughts played leapfrog, ring-a-ring-of-roses, and musical chairs. I might have chanced a grab at Parkhurst, but with Jericho Jim keeping me covered as well I wouldn’t get much change out of a bullet. If they were going to kill me, let them do it now, or if they weren’t, I’d better do something, though what that would be didn’t bear thinking about.
Chapter Twenty
Square one is Blaskin’s territory — all mine — which I seldom leave nowadays. I may be boxed in, but Blaskin is familiar with square one, and comfortable in it. He writes in square one because square one is Blaskin’s own, a fortress nobody else can be allowed to enter. He would have been very much at home in a square at Waterloo, noise and carnage notwithstanding. Sooner or later Blaskin pushes a completed novel through the portcullis of square one, receiving in exchange whatever material has been raked from all the other squares in the world.
Square two never gets a look-in. Any prospective novel in the process of being lived through by my one-time bastard son Michael Cullen always comes sooner or later back to square one, to be narrated by the knowing hand of its all-seeing author Gilbert Blaskin, especially when Michael is in a midden’s creek with no apparent means of propulsion to cleaner waters, which is where I’ll leave him for a while.
Early morning is my most energetic time, though I fritter too much away in trivialities, before sauntering off to do proper work at my desk in square one. Breakfast is Mabel’s worst hour, and in trying to put her at her ease I emerge from the bathroom singing my favourite Tennysonian ditty, unable to leave anything holy, or wholly, alone:
“Come into the garden, Maud,
The social worker has fled.
The whisky flask’s full and the bed is broad
In the dark of the charcoal shed …”
She stood, tall and splendid, a cashmere jumper over high well-rounded bosom, always desirable in such revealing sweaters, as she well knew. I had seen drawers of them in all colours from rainbow trout to spectrum dazzle, everyone but the first, which I’d bought her, purloined from Harrod’s, so many I didn’t know how the firm survived, but to remark on her congenital thievery so early in the morning wouldn’t be fair.
“Do stop that caterwauling, Gilbert. I have a headache.”
“I’m only trying to amuse you on this dank and melancholy Knightsbridge morning.”
She poured herself a cup of coffee, and I’ll never know why this brought forth in me such a frisson of annoyance. She stoked herself a little more into life: “You sang it yesterday, and the day before that.”
“Thank you for reminding me. I trill because I can’t help it. I don’t feel like anyone in the world on waking up in the morning, so you have to take whatever comes from my Jack-in-the-Box, just as I have to brace myself against the censoriousness that pops from your Jill-in-the-Box. We were certainly made for each other.”
“How can you possibly think so?”
“Because you’re drinking coffee, when you should be all flustered in the kitchen assembling my boarding school breakfast. It disturbs me when you break the routine.”
She sipped. “You know I’ve never liked routine.”
“Why didn’t you tell me so before?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t like to hear it. It often strikes me I’m not the sort of person you think I am.”
“That’s good news. But don’t you know that routine is a way of making life go by with as little trouble as possible? It’s the only system that allows me to get any work done, which I suppose is why you’ve taken against it.”
“It’s not only that. I’m not doing your breakfast today, because as soon as I’ve had my coffee I’m leaving you.”
“Not again! What is it this time? Have I said something you don’t like? Or is it that I don’t tell you everything I’m thinking? All right, I’ll mend my ways, and tell you that last night, before getting into bed, I fell on my knees and prayed for the first time in years: ‘Dear God,’ I said, ‘send me a stroke, a coronary, or a quick cancer (all at the same instant, for preference) to get me out of myself, which will release Mabel and me at the same time.’ Then I changed my mind, and asked God not to kill me under any circumstances, so that I could encourage myself to be more loving and open with such a sweet and willing paramour. ‘She’s the best angel in the house any man could have,’ I said, ‘far too good and beautiful to ever be sent to Coventry.’ I really did pray like that, so what’s ailing you, my darling, that you could possibly want to leave me?”
I felt an ugly mood coming on, and lit a cigar, knowing she couldn’t stand its odour so early in the morning. “Here I am, smoking and belching to my heart’s content, having romped from slumber in my Roland Rat siren suit, and then I see you, the light of my life, such a tall lovely comely bosomly heavenly woman that I can only weep with joy at my good fortune.”