The Old Man and Me (22 page)

“Hello from Paris, dear Maestro, it’s me.”

“Yes I know,” I could hear C. D. breathing heavily on the other end of the line, “I’ve been ringing and ringing you. I finally got on to Dody and she told me. What are you doing there?”

“Looking at the rain.”

“So am I.” More heavy breathing. “When are you coming back?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good. What airline?” His voice sounded strangled.

“It’s the B. E. A. seven-something-or-other. Wait a sec. Seven-one-five.”

“I’ll meet you at the airport.”

“That’s awfully sweet of you but why bother?”

“Because I’m in a hurry.”

“In a hurry? Why, where are you—”

“My God,” he exploded, “do you understand nothing of lechery? See that you’re on that plane.” And abruptly he hung up.

Well, I thought. Well,
well
.

I only had time to register that the C. D. of the airport was certainly not the C. D. of that long ago day at Paddington Station before he stepped forward and planted a big moist kiss hard on my mouth.

“You all right?” I asked. He looked terrible, all drawn and haggard.

“Dreadful. Didn’t complete the course. The idea is to starve, irrigate, and sweat the poisons out of you first and then when you’re all weak and pure and empty gradually build you up again. Only I bolted before that part. They’re furious and my system is furious, raging with headache and indigestion.” He pulled me towards him unbuttoning the top button of my coat and squeezed one of my breasts right there in front of all Gate Five. He gave a great sigh and seemed to relax. “Can’t be helped,” he said. “One was simply not in the mood.”

I was feeling agreeably power-mad by now and decided he could do with a bit of a tease. “Don’t forget to give the driver my address,” I said perkily as we stepped into the car. “I must touch base chez Dody and unpack and such like.”

“No. You’re coming straight home with me.”

“Why?” I made my face look surprised.

“Because I want to do you. Right now.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself,” I murmured. “Suppose I
say no?”

“Ah darling, darling...if you knew how my guts were crawling.”

And well, I thought again. Well, well.

To be flung upon a bed—clothes pulled up, clothes pulled down, clothes pulled off every which way—to be the uniquely needed object of a passion so strong that early on it passes you to go soaring endlessly off into an undreamed-of blue infinity. Isn’t that what every woman wants to experience at least once in her life? Not her own fulfilment, not her own orgasm, delicate or lusty, but to be the conducting rod, the spring board from which rises this awe-inspiring fanatical motion. There was no question of my joining him that particular afternoon or even joining in. I must say he presented an interesting if rather alarming sight as I watched him reaching reaching reaching, his hair all mad and awry, his face bright red, veins standing out with strain, his breath fast, his mouth open and aghast. I lay very still, very soft, very open while his heart pounded and his sweat poured over me and finally believed what I had never believed before. That it could kill you. And, lovingly, I wished that he had died like that. I wish he had died that way.

Later that night, sitting at Maretta’s, we recognized to our thrilled astonishment at the table next to us, and in the company of a man who was extremely drunk, none other than The Legend himself, magnificently carved out of granite. The next thing we knew the drunk had got ahold of one of the violins from off the bandstand and was wandering around the room sobbing as he tried to play it. Gently The Legend led him back to the table. “It is his Magyar blood,” said The Legend turning to us. “It comes to boil whenever he gets near violins. His second wife has left him.” Then with unparalleled simplicity and grandeur he introduced himself. “I am a Legend in my own time,” he said smiling shyly, his eyes moist with modesty. “The last of the kind they don’t make any more.”

“Yes,” I breathed, “I know.” And I looked at him in wonder seeing him so tanned and tough and fit, thinking of all he’d been through—the wars and revolutions, the plane wrecks and train wrecks and shipwrecks; the floods and famines and droughts.

“What does the name Annabelle Hunt conjure up for you?” he asked me.

“Nothing,” I gasped, still breathless from this brush with the Hall of Fame.

“Exactly. It is, however, the name of Hank here’s second wife. A movie starlet. One of her delusions is that she is a household word. I’ve got it!” he roared, suddenly startling me by banging his fist on the table and chortling with glee. “A delusion of Annabelle Hunt’s, is to think that she’s one of the Lunts. Got it at last. Been working on it all night.”

Hank winced and ordered a double vodka.

“My dear friend—” The Legend shook his head sadly at this. “Excuse me, pretty girl,” he said to me in what I took to be courtly international Who-Who-ese at which it was impossible to take offence, “excuse me for horning in on your evening like this but I would like to use you in the little moral I am about to point out to our melancholy friend. Look here,” he said to Hank. “Here is a girl fresh and lovely and well-groomed. And that fine gentleman with you, is it your husband? Ah—she laughs. What a fine laugh she has. You see? With every turn of the earth we are delivered
up of delightful maidens, good and cheerful and adaptable. Will you and the distinguished gentleman who is enjoying your company join us in cracking a cool, clean, sparkling bottle of the best?”

Legendary as he was I could not help noticing that he was also slightly loaded but we joined them in a flash, C. D. as goggle-eyed as I by the encounter.

The Legend then proceeded in his Legendary way to deliver himself of pronouncements whose style varied from the leisurely rhythmic—“That girl who was singing is good. She has it and she knows what to do with it and how to look while she is doing it, what to do with her voice and hands”—to the terse informative—“Irish loony bins are the best in the world,” and I was exposed for the first time to the Royal You: the Royal You being as royal as the Royal We but more inclusive as it doesn’t mean Me but—Us (and what could be more flattering?). Thus I learned that You always have a good ripe piece of dead stag or old ewe handy in the hard weather when You set up Your cage trap for hoodie crows.

“C. D. McKee,” The Legend was eyeing him thoughtfully. “It tolls a bell. There was a British General in the last war with a name something like that.”

“Yes, that was me, but how on earth—”

“I had some dealings with British Intelligence then.” The Legend raised his glass. “To the man who broke the German diplomatic code,” he pronounced.

“Helped break,” murmured C. D.

“Right you are. I’ll go along with British understatement then. And”—glass aloft again—“
helped
invent the virtually unbreakable British diplomatic code after that punk of a valet in Turkey stole the dip code book from the British Ambassador. I know all about you.” Another slug of champagne rolled around his tongue approvingly. “A fine toast to a fine and clever man.” The Legend’s eyes moistened again with emotion.

We all sat around looking happy and proud and even Hank got his nose out of his double vodka long enough to aim a vast if uncoordinated look of admiration in C. D.’s direction.

The Legend, it turned out, was marking time between legends for a week or two before he was off to the Middle East and, his friends in England being either dead or out of town, he was doing all his hunting, fishing and shooting in the Trophy Room of a magnificent house in Belgravia which the Duke of Something had loaned him (the Duke having prudently taken to the hills until it blew over) whither we eventually repaired.

The Duke’s Trophy room was an arrangement with one part of a recessed wall revealing a shooting gallery and the rest hung high and low with various stuffed animals so peculiar in aspect as to make me wonder whether they had ever been real. For instance, there was a sort of buffalo who wore his
hair
parted in the middle and his horns very low, and the animal next to him was a sort of—I don’t know what—but he wore his horns high and his ears low. These ears were so enormous that the effect (or maybe the truth) was that of a donkey with horns glued on. And then there was this thing which was, no kidding, no bigger than a mouse. With horns. A dik-dik, said The Legend, one of the most difficult animals for You to hunt of them all. This was a specially rare specimen. A
female
dik-dik. Then there was, let’s see, Your usual sports paraphernalia: skis and fishing rods and all that; Your usual boxing cups and rowing cups and silver-framed signed photographs of old deposed royalty, and Your usual pair of huge over-sexed dogs who salivate and snuffle all over You until they have to be told down, Prinny, down, in order to save You from being hurled against the wall by them and impaled on the horn of a dik-dik.

It was not long after we arrived—some four whiskies after—that The Legend, having put on the gloves and done some shadow boxing (and almost connected with Hank stumbling across his path on his way to the bar), and a bit of fly casting, ambled over to the shooting-gallery, and expressed a desire to shoot a cigarette out of C. D.’s mouth.

“I don’t smoke,” said C. D. faintly.

“Why don’t you just shoot the tops off those flowers in the vase, ha-ha?” asked Hank even more faintly.

The Legend was not amused. “What is the sport in that?” he asked, enunciating carefully, and Hank, grey as an ash, realizing that shooting flower tops was one of the things You didn’t do, took himself off to bed dragging his disgrace behind him.

The telephone rang. The Legend left the room to answer it.

“Extraordinary the way he stimulates one’s hero-worship,” said C. D. “I suppose like all legends he is irresistible though I never actually went through that phase myself. Think it’s too late for me to start playing Huckleberry Finn to his Nigger Jim?”

“Listen—” I noticed I was drunk again. “Listen, why don’t you only let him shoot one little old cigarette out of your mouth? I dare you. After all it’s just a shooting-gallery gun. He can’t be a Legend for nothing.”

The Legend came back. “Pepe’s fighting six bulls in Saragossa on Sunday,” he announced cryptically. “I should be there with him.” He worked out with some Indian clubs for a while and then sat down. “More whisky?”

It was all wearing thin for me. Although I yielded to no one in my admiration of his genius I was getting tired of hearing great empty sentences like “Normality has infinitely more variations than perversion” or “A soup made of raw fish and vinegar; You have it first thing every morning” uttered in tones of such terrible finality. And C. D. sitting in rapt attention was beginning to worry me. All I needed was for the old man to pick up and go trailing off with The Legend to the Middle East or Saragossa. Yes...I was drunk. And searching the room for death traps. Go on, Mister McKee, put on the gloves and step into the ring with Mister Legend...Or: what better way to polish him off than to give Fatty a pair of skis and a pair of sticks and shove him down the side of the mountain. I sipped some more whisky. It was getting harder to concentrate. Split his head open with an oar. My head was splitting wide open with a roar.

“Shoot the cigarette out of
my
mouth.” It was me talking.

They both looked at me. “What?”

“I said shoot the cigarette out of my mouth. Come on.” I had risen and was making my way towards the shooting gallery.

The Legend shook his head slowly. “It is not a game to play with the ladies. It is too hard on them,” he declared. “And you’ve had a little too much to drink as well.”

“But I’m dying to see you do it. And I don’t mind. I’m not afraid. I trust you. Please.”

“I say, try it with me.” At last C. D. had spoken up.

I watched while they put C. D. into the shooting gallery. And I watched while they put a cigarette in his mouth and turned him profile. I watched while The Legend loaded the gallery gun and took his stance. Then quietly I tip-toed over to a wall and counted three. And then I yelled “Ouch!”

The next sound I heard was the sound of the shot a split second later. And the next sound I heard was that of The Legend’s hand as he slapped me hard across the face.

When I came to there was C. D., the broken cigarette still numbly clutched in his mouth, and The Legend towering over me in an ice-cold rage. “I’m sorry—” I gasped, “that horn—it almost went through the back of my neck, I couldn’t help—”

The Legend dragged me roughly to my feet and the look he gave me sobered me up at once. “Yes, you could,” he said slowly. “What you did was deliberate. And what I did was deliberate. One deliberate act deserves another. What’s the matter with you? I might have blown off his face.”

“Oh come now,” said C. D. “I’m sure Miss Flood didn’t mean to.” he trailed off weakly and pulled out the remains of the cigarette which still stuck to his lips.

The Legend turned and looked at him quizzically and then back to me again. He took my face in his hands and I thought for a moment he was going to hit me again but instead he pulled down the lower lids of my eyes and stared at them professionally like a doctor. “Get rid of her,” he said to C. D. finally. He took a step back and I saw to my amazement that he was trembling. “Get rid of her fast. Can’t you understand that she’s crazy?”

Now a certain vagueness creeps into the narrative—a certain confusion as to the sequence of subsequent events. For instance Scotty suddenly showed up three days—or was it three weeks—later? And was that before or after C. D. had gone to the Daggoners’ that weekend with Lady Mary and she made off with that fierce young man I’d met there called Michael Ward Bell? And exactly when was that great moment when I stood C. D. up? That was a landmark. And when did I start getting my regular supplies from that friend of Jimbo, the pill purveyor? I really don’t know. It all comes under the heading of After That.

The Legend had said “Can’t you understand that she’s crazy?” and After That there was C. D. comforting my weeping form in the taxi on the way back to Dody’s and After That: Scotty’s return. Scotty and Dody and Jimbo and Jinkie...well, I can’t remember much of that but then: Scotty and
Jinkie.
Dody and
Jimbo.
That was the switch. Did Scotty take one look at Jinkie and—finding at last his hipster of all time—flip out first? Or
was it after (or because of) Dody and Jimbo falling quietly, deeply, and contentedly in love (she would sit for hours sketching his beautiful face)? Anyway, clever Mother Nature. Taking care of everyone. But me.