Clubbed to Death (3 page)

‘More likely to be a down-and-out than a captain of anything, the way things are going,’ said Amiss gloomily.

‘Well, maybe you won’t get the job and you’ll have to apply for something sensible.’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t much chance of my not getting the job. I understand from Ellis that the turnover in staff in ffeatherstonehaugh’s is spectacularly high even by club standards. They treat them badly and the inmates are madder than the norm, I gather. So at the moment they are short of about five underlings. It would be very strange indeed if they were to reject a WASP like me.’

‘I don’t know what to wish you on this one, other than a short and safe tour of duty.’

‘Look on the bright side. I’ll be gaining some useful experience for being an embassy husband. I’ll know from which side to present the canapés.’

3

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At 9 a.m. Amiss began ringing employment agencies specialising in the catering trade. By ten o’clock he was standing in a short queue on the premises of the one that had sounded most hopeful. To his delight no one seemed to want to fraternise, so he was able to read his
Independent
. From the snippets he picked up from overhearing interviews, there appeared to be few fluent speakers of English among the job hunters.

The surroundings were plain; the interviewers crisp. By ten twenty-five he was sitting in front of a large woman wearing an enormous grey Aran cardigan that bore all the unhappy signs of having been knitted by an over-ambitious amateur.

‘Experience?’ she demanded.

‘Not as a waiter,’ said Amiss hesitantly. ‘But I have been a barman.’

‘Hum,’ she said. ‘Testimonials?’

He passed over rather sheepishly the five-line encomium from his landlord friend, awash with lavish praise of his probity, uprightness, sobriety and general reliability.

‘So why don’t you stick with bartending? Why d’you want to be a waiter?’

‘I need a live-in job and I heard there were more as a waiter. And anyway, I want to increase my experience.’

She glowered at him through her heavy spectacles and tapped impatiently on the desk with her pen. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to, ’ she informed him crossly, ‘when a young fellow like you is wasting himself on this kind of job. Why aren’t you a schoolteacher or something? You’re obviously educated.’

Amiss gazed at her defiantly. ‘Because I’m a poet,’ he said firmly, ‘so I can’t afford to expend any of my creativity in my work.’

‘I suppose I should be grateful you’re not doing it on my taxes. Now why did you say you wanted clubs and not hotels? You can live in in either of them.’

‘I prefer the kind of person you get in clubs.’

She looked unimpressed. ‘They’re more cultured,’ he offered, rather desperately. ‘You can get to know them.’

She eyed him dubiously. ‘Well, it’s your funeral. All right. Here are details of the jobs available at the moment.’

Amiss leafed through the cards, which listed vacancies in half a dozen or so clubs.

‘Hurry up. Choose two.’

He took out the cards for the Repeal and ffeatherstonehaugh’s.

‘Don’t take ffeatherstonehaugh’s,’ she said. ‘You won’t like it. The staff get rotten food and rotten conditions and everyone there is mad. It’s got the highest turnover of any of our clients. Being English, you’d easily get into one of the others.’

Amiss was touched by her concern and impressed by her brutal honesty. ‘Nevertheless, I like the sound of it. It has a romantic aura.’

‘Romantic aura my granny. But maybe you’re daft enough for it,’ she declared sourly. ‘Don’t complain to me when you walk out in a week’s time. ’ Scribbling his name on a couple of introductory cards, she handed them over, nodded curtly and called for the next applicant.

He was outside ffeatherstonehaugh’s by eleven o’clock. It had proved particularly difficult to find, being in a kind of mews off an alley off a side-street. However, there was nothing discreet about the building: it was a brash, daring and vulgar parody of the Athenaeum. Where the Athenaeum entrance was dominated by a huge figure of Minerva, ffeatherstonehaugh’s had Venus. In place of the Athenaeum’s faithful reproduction of the Parthenon frieze, featuring the pride of Athenian youth on beautifully sculpted horses, ffeatherstonehaugh’s had reproductions of erotic Hindu sculptures. On either side of the five steps leading into the building there loafed a marble Grecian youth, unclad, and well-endowed, wearing a provocative leer.

Amiss found it impossible not to enjoy the joke: call it art and you can get away with anything, even if you are Victorian. Still smiling, he went up the stairs into the rather dark and grimy lobby, where he was stopped by a stooped and gnarled ancient in a dingy frock-coat.

‘How can I help you, sir?’

‘I should like to see the club steward, please.’

The ancient, who was wearing what was presumably his normal expression of obsequiousness, altered it instantly to one denoting shock and contempt. ‘And what might your business be?’ he enquired, the unsaid ‘sir’ hanging between them.

‘I’ve come about a job.’ From the glare cast at him, it was clear that he would have to work hard to be forgiven for allowing himself to be mistaken, even momentarily, for a gentleman.

‘Well, you can’t see him,’ announced the porter with satisfaction. ‘ ’E’s gorn.’

Amiss noted that the posh accent had disappeared along with the courtesy. ‘When you say gone…?’

‘I mean gorn… fired.’ The old blighter looked pleased.

‘Well then, may I see the secretary?’ asked Amiss, aware that this was an even more futile request, since it was the secretary’s demise he was hoping to investigate.

‘ ’E’s dead, ‘ said the porter with even more pleasure.

‘Dead? Was it sudden?’

‘As sudden as it can be. One minute he’s upstairs having a drink and a chat with some of the members. Next minute he’s jumped off the gallery and splat, he’s all over the floor of the Saloon.’

Amiss affected shock. ‘How horrible. Killed instantly, was he?’

‘Well, what d’you expect to happen when you jump sixty feet on to a tiled floor?’ asked the sage.

‘Splat,’ said Amiss.

‘Splat’s right. And you should of seen the skidmarks. ’E travelled a fair bit, I can tell you. It was a real mess.’ By now the porter was clearly softening towards his appreciative audience.

‘I suppose you’d better see Commander Blenkinsop. He’s doing the secretary’s job till we find a new one. He used to be secretary until the new git took over.’

‘You didn’t like him?’

‘Interfering bollocks.’ The porter was throwing all dignity and discretion to the wind. ‘Trying to go changing things. I don’t see the point. Now the Commander, he understands what the club is about. He’s one of the old school.’ And with an approving nod at his own sagacity, he beckoned to Amiss and led him into the interior of the building.

Amiss was pleased that Pooley had been able the previous day to take him into the body of the Reform Club to prepare him for the lampoon of that noble interior perpetrated by ffeatherstonehaugh’s. Without a reasonable knowledge of the original, the subtlety of the caricature would have been lost on him. As it was, he recognised immediately that the great square central hall with colonnades, a fine staircase and an upper gallery closely resembled the original. It was in the incidental adornments that the differences were strikingly obvious. Where the Reform’s mosaic floor featured a geometrical design, ffeatherstonehaugh’s favoured frolicking nymphs and shepherds, draped lightly, or in some cases, not at all.

‘He fell on to this?’ Amiss asked.

‘He sure did.’ The porter grinned evilly, revealing several gaps among his greeny-grey front teeth. ‘Made a right mess of that crowd over there, I can tell you.’ He directed Amiss’s attention to what appeared to represent a bacchanalian orgy. ‘Put a bit of a stop to their gallop, if you ask me,’ he said with a malevolent chuckle.

Amiss was fascinated by this display of prurient fancy. Its creator gestured at him to wait and disappeared through a door in the corner of the hall. Amiss gazed around looking for evidence of fresh travesties. Like the Reform, ffeatherstonehaugh’s had enormous portraits inset into the walls. Amiss speculated wildly as to who would feature in place of the Reform’s great liberal statesmen. Satyrs? Strippers? From where he stood the outlook seemed disappointing. Although he could see one woman, she was fully clothed, and the chaps looked like most chaps in varying kinds of historical kit. Unable to contain his curiosity he dashed over to the portrait that dominated the hall, the one that a cunning arrangement of huge mirrors ensured could be seen from every angle. The picture was enormous, probably one and a half times life size, and it featured a chap with voluptuous lips whom Amiss didn’t recognise. He read the plaque underneath: ‘John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 1647-1680’.

Good God! thought Amiss. Ellis didn’t tell me this. Rochester, the great dirty poet. What an extraordinary un-English patron saint for a club. He felt a sudden rush of certainty that he was going to enjoy his time at ffeatherstonehaugh’s – whatever horrors it might bring.

‘Young fellow, come here, ’ thundered a voice behind him. ‘Come on, come on, come on. Don’t keep me waiting. That’s the trouble with you young fellows these days. No respect. No get-up-and-go. No idea of right and wrong. Deafened by pop music. Heads crammed full of ideas above their station. Now stop gaping, gaping, as I said. Stop gaping and come over here double-quick and tell me what you’re good for.’

Christ, thought Amiss. Another parody. And with as much speed as dignity would permit he walked over to the Commander.

4

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The Commander had the florid complexion one expected of an old sailor, though Amiss guessed it more likely to be attributable to an excess of alcohol rather than sun, wind and sea. His extreme portliness tended to confirm the diagnosis, though he had the height to carry it well. He wore a blazer of some antiquity and his loud pink-and-black-striped tie sported several stains.

It was not an exacting interview. As the Commander explained from the start, it was a nice change to have somebody white and English-speaking looking for a job.

‘That’s one good thing about all this unemployment,’ he remarked cheerily. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining, what?’

Being unable to think of a response which would please his conscience and the Commander, Amiss resorted to a weak smile.

‘Mind you,’ said the Commander, proving himself to be a more even-handed man than Amiss had expected, ‘at least some of these blacks have some get-up-and-go. Whereas a fellow like you looking for a dead-end job like this must be a bloody layabout.’

‘I need the free time for my poetry,’ said Amiss bravely.

‘A poet!’ The broken veins on the Commander’s face seemed to stand out in an even deeper purple. ‘A bloody poet?’

‘Yes,’ said Amiss. ‘Like the Earl of Rochester.’

A few seconds passed before that sally connected with the befuddled brain of the Commander and then light broke through. ‘Well, you young dog,’ he said. ‘Rochester, of course, our great patron. He was a good poet, right enough. Let me remember. I used to be able to recite this when I was a younger man.’ He fell back on to the nearest bench, his eyes glazed over with the strain of concentration. Moments passed and then he erupted into a noisy gabble. ‘So bring me a seat and buy me a drink and a tale to you I’ll tell.’ There was another long pause followed by a further burst: ‘Of dead-eyed Dick and Mexico Pete and a whore named Eskimo Nell.’ He beamed proudly.

Amiss was usually prepared to put up with the unspeakable opinions of those he needed to woo, but such an assault on his intellectual integrity proved more than he could bear. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said, adopting as craven a tone as he could muster, ‘but “Eskimo Nell” was not written by the Earl of Rochester.’ Seeing the Commander begin to swell like a bullfrog, he added tactfully: ‘It is of course, sir, a splendid poem, and close to the kind of thing that the Earl went in for, but he did not write it.’

After a couple of seconds the Commander clearly decided that this was no time for a dispute about literary attribution. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘you’re one of those long-haired chaps. Dare say you’re right. It was just something 1 learned at one of the Rochester evenings that we used to have in the good old days of the club. Dear, dear. We never have any fun any more.’

A question rose and died on Amiss’s lips. What he needed was a job. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to know, sir?’

‘Well, what can you do? Can you do anything? I mean dammit, what are you? Are you a waiter? Are you a valet? Can you cook? What’re you good for? Except poetry, that is. Not much call for it in the club these days.’

‘Well, I have experience working behind a bar, sir, and I expect I could quickly learn to be a valet or a waiter.’

The Commander was clearly losing interest. Judging by the occasional fumes that had reached Amiss’s nostrils, he suspected his putative employer had been interrupted in mid-drink.

‘All right, all right. That’s fair enough. We’ll try you out now. Do you want to live in or out?’

‘How does it work out financially?’ asked Amiss with some trepidation. It was a pretty poor show, being a snoop who got no money from the people who asked him to do the job, while being expected to live on whatever grotty earnings he got from ghastly jobs that made him ineligible for the dole.

‘Makes no difference. Either way you get one hundred and twenty quid a week for a full shift with your meals. If you live in you get full board, except for weekends, when you get nothing unless you’re looking after the residents.’

‘You mean I get paid the same regardless of whether I live in the club or out of it?’

The Commander gurgled with merriment. ‘When you’ve seen where you’ll be livingyou won’t be surprised. Now come on in here and let’s try you out in the bar.’