“I wouldn’t do such an underhanded thing.”
Another spate of something close to a fire alarm, and when she went to answer it I called out that I was going to get my revolver and kill him. Either Kenilworth Dukes had had an operation on his windpipe, or it was someone else. “You can’t,” she said from the door. “You definitely can’t.”
“I most certainly can, and will.”
“He’s out for the day.”
“I’m sure he isn’t.”
“He’s not here I tell you.”
“Get out of my way, you hussy.”
Mabel did a backwards spin to where I was standing, as if to ask my cooperation in saving her life. A six-foot elderly female followed her in, with a laden cloth reticule on one arm and a formidable ivory-handled umbrella under the other, looking like an impersonator from the Clapham omnibus after a good day giving out white feathers in the Great War to men who rightly didn’t want any part of the carnage.
“Gertrude!” I was shocked to my roots. “Stay where you are.” I pushed Mabel into the kitchen: “Make some of your coffee for our guest, the sort that tastes like weak Oxo.”
Sister Gertrude, who had been the spiteful, bullying persecuting demonic girl of my nightmare childhood, the retired matron of a large hospital, now living off the memories of devoted and lovely young ladies from whom she had stood no nonsense, had indeed given them a good dressing down for her own sinister pleasure, or taken them to task at the slightest infringement of the rules, driving some to tears and the eternal disappointment at having failed in life, or to penury and unemployment and single motherhood, and even to suicide.
When I harangued her about it some years ago she responded that at least the hospitals had been clean and well run in those days. “Or mine was, at any rate.” In spite of such jousting whenever we met I knew there to be a sensitive Blaskin soul buried like a barren acorn deep inside. She had always suffered from the dissatisfaction of assuming that her industry was undervalued, and that she should have dedicated herself to some other more appreciative occupation. Such as prison governor, I thought, or the headmistress of a tee-total non-smoking boarding house on a remote Scottish island. Yet she had come out of her way to see me and was, after all, my own flesh and blood, so it behoved me to be polite. “What the hell do you want here, you vicious old bag?”
“Watch your tongue, Gilbert, and while I fully realise that might be a physical impossibility I can always produce a mirror for you to see what state it’s in, and I’m sure even you wouldn’t like it, you dissipated old devil.”
Such a remark was not unexpected, but it riled me to see Mabel looking with admiration and approval from the kitchen door, for which stance I determined to make her pay later, with inflationary interest.
“Get out of my flat, you secret gin imbiber, or I’ll have the police eject you as a squatter and march you off to jail.”
“I have things to say to you,” she said calmly. “But ask me to sit down. I’m not as young as I was.”
“That’s a blessing, but do take a seat, and tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I can’t think why you need to ask.” She settled herself on the sofa, so as to face the kitchen and make sure Mabel overheard. “Ever since becoming what you call a writer”—I recalled the same sneer from infancy, as a signal that an unjustified blow was on its way — “you’ve dragged the good name of Blaskin through the mud. Every so-called novel you write is a midden of obscenity and blasphemy. You extol crime, promote violence, and denigrate women. And men as well, though I don’t care so much about that. You describe the world’s ills with relish, and scoff at the idea of any solution. As for your publishers, they should be prosecuted and sent to jail, though it’s you who are the fount of the filth.”
“You put things so beautifully,” I broke in. “Perhaps you should have been the writer.”
“I did not come here to be insulted. Your books are full of dirt, all cabbage stumps and cigarette ends, cobwebs and vile rot, with enough swearing to bring out the indignation of any upright person. They’re utterly degrading, and no encouragement to the young, whom you think nothing of ruthlessly corrupting.”
In one way I was proud of her courage, which no Blaskin lacked, in having the nerve to tackle me. “I know all that, but what exactly are you getting at?”
Mabel put a pot of deliciously aromatic coffee before her, and a plate of the best H and P biscuits on a cloth doyly. “Your last book was downright criminal,” Gertrude said.
“I take it you’re referring to The Capture of Precious Moments? I’m fond of that book. But don’t you think of my novels as the children you never had? Can’t you love them accordingly?”
“Beast!” she said under her breath, but I caught the word.
“Capture was only successful because the publisher notoriously stated on the flyleaf: ‘Don’t let your children lay hands on this book for fear they lay hands on themselves.’ In any case, Gertrude, no one forced you to open the first book you’ve read in your life. And you couldn’t have imagined that coming here would do you any good. You could have written a poison pen letter instead.”
Drinking her coffee, which was hotter than her desiccated insides, she smiled at Mabel, who flushed with a happiness not shown since her crush on the headmistress at school. “Don’t you realise,” Gertrude said, “that every time you publish a novel people stop me on the street and ask if we’re related?”
“I can’t think why else they would accost you. I’d run a mile at the sight of you.”
She gave a little twist to her mouth. “They’re horrified when I tell them that we are. And so am I. I have to say we are because I can never tell an untruth. People were so appalled at your last novel that I was constrained to read it and find out why. It was a stream of unmitigated raw sewage. Apart from that, you can imagine — or perhaps you won’t — how the Reverend George Blaskin suffers. As his brother you should respect him. He goes through the torments of hell, having to live with the reputation of your terrible books. He’d aged twenty years since I last saw him. If you can’t stop writing in the way you do you must give up writing entirely.”
Mabel was in such agreement at the way things were going that Gertrude turned to her: “You’re his special friend, at least for the moment, I should think, so can’t you persuade him to mend his ways?”
“I do try, Miss Blaskin,” she simpered, “but it’s no use. He just rides roughshod over me.”
Gertrude moved her head from side to side. “You shouldn’t let him bully you. Come and sit by me, my dear.”
I put on the North Country comedy accent that Bill Straw once used for my amusement. “Stay where you are! I’ll have none o’ that in my ’ouse!”
Mabel ignored me, and joined her on the sofa. “You must stop writing such trash,” Gertrude went on, and I thought she was about to take a prayerbook from her reticule for me to swear by. “You show no respect for God, the Queen, or anyone decent and loving. The rector said after church last Sunday that you should be horsewhipped for your disrespect to the Deity.”
I put my cup down so firmly the handle broke. “Oh, did he? He wants to see me in sackcloth and ashrams, crawling on my belly up his worm-eaten church to recant? Well, you can tell your choir boy molesting rector to stop reading dirty books, or I’ll come up to his damp-rot place of worship, get him by the scruff of the neck, and hold his face in the christening water till he chokes on the microbes and goes to hell.” I was rather proud of that peroration. “Tell him that.”