Sauve Qui Peut: Stories Page 3

  You see what I mean? Hardly the sort of thing one wants written up by Sam. Besides, this Carter episode touched off a powder-barrel in our own Mission. We were unaware that we were sitting on it. Mind you, I had smelled burning for some time but couldn’t locate the site. You remember Drage? Of course you do. Yes, here we are truly in the field of Revealed Religion. All that winter the Visions had been gaining on him, the Voices had been whispering seditious info, into his faun-like ears. Also he was at war with Dovebasket—always a dangerous thing, and now doubly so for that human vacuum had just taken a degree in applied electronics. Drage alarmed me, Dovebasket disgusted. I held no brief for either. But things went from Bad to Worse, and the food began to go to blazes. The Instant Pudding refused to stand to attention. Dovebasket had fixed the bunsens in the kitchen to such good purpose that Drage virtually found himself supervising nuclear tests with self-raising flour. De Mandeville worked out a Menu for the French Mission Dinner which was too near the bone to raise anything but the hollowest of laughs. It spoke of plovers’ eggs in ether and baby rusks marinated in nitric acid. It hinted at cocktails of lemon curd and ammonia with just a touch of machine oil from the crank-case of some abandoned locomotive. Gods! There was even the British Club Sandwich which he diagnosed as consisting of old raffia work with thin slices of thrice-triturated gymno-sophist. Drage seemed to have gone dead Continental. And still the Visions pressed on him, thicker and faster. Finally Drage was forced to ask for religious help from the leader of his sect—a Nonconformist preacher called Fly-Fornication Wilkinson. He was a tall spindly man with a goatee and huge goggles. Little comfort, I should have thought, could be derived from his strange allure. But what to do? We could all see that the fellow had a mushroom-shaped psyche. His voice was deep and boomy with an occasional scream like a police whistle on the word “sin” which made one sit up and metaphorically spurn the gravel with one’s hooves. He moved into Drage’s cottage to offer him the occasional winged word. Next thing was Drage asked if he might address us on a Sunday and preach a sermon. The Chaplain was away playing roulette in Nice that week. In matters of religion we are extremely liberal. I could hardly refuse.

  The fellow took as his text “King Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” The hats of the Embassy ladies had apparently caused him grave offence. He pointed at them as he lashed out at us. His words whistled through the side-chapel like grape-shot. De Mandeville paled and began to sob quietly into a cambric handkerchief. To hear him you would have thought the typists’ pool was rotten to the core and that Polk-Mowbray was living a life of untrammelled lubricity with a cageful of nightingales. I must say!

  Yet for the first time as we listened we all began to feel a kind of sneaking pride in Dovebasket, a warmth about the heart. He had bugged the pulpit. He was going to avenge us—even though his real target had been the unfortunate Drage. Never mind. The Rev. Fly-Fornication was going to receive the charge. I must say, though, he was game: despite every set-back he plunged on with his sermon. Flames leapt from the harmonium when Miss Todger’s elfin foot touched the treadles. They were gallantly beaten out with Polk-Mowbray’s overcoat. Wilkinson resumed his discourse. Electronic devices buried in the walls now opened up a barrage of jungle music, cowbells, mating cats and so on. Wilkinson tightened his pegs and let his voice soar above it. Then on the wall behind us appeared a giant coloured projection which said “REPENT YOU DOGS” and then another saying, “DRAGE, I’VE COME FOR YOU, YOU BASTARD.” This was signed “Jaweh” in an illiterate schoolchild’s hand. It was clearly going to be a battle to the finish, for the undismayed preacher gathered himself together and ploughed on. Dovebasket was looking pale and tense now. Was he going to lose the day? Desperate measures must be taken. He must play his last card. Trembling with excitement, he leaned forward and pressed switch F under the pulpit. Thank God, it worked. A six-pound boxing-glove slid out of the wall with a smart click and dealt the reverend gentleman a massive thump below the left ear. It was the pay-off. He fell out of the crow’s nest on to the much-tried front rank of the Mission. His head came dreamily to rest on Polk-Mowbray’s knees. The world suddenly looked brighter. I could hear the birds singing in the Embassy shrubbery. Loving hands were there to gather up the pieces, to dispose the body for burial. But Wilkinson still breathed. He was flown home on a stretcher at Crown expense. Moreover, Drage was cured as if by a miracle; at least temporarily. The cooking swung back to good plain home. He still retained Wilkinson’s Bible and from time to time would read from it in a voice mossy with gutturals and general tonic sol fa. But the worst was over. Drage had become an ordinary butler again, a human being full of ordinary old-fashioned blood.

  I could give you many other examples of what one might call the religious impulse in the Corps; it varied enormously. I hope Sam takes advantage of some of the more colourful episodes, like when Polk-Mowbray decided to build a Marxist chapel in the Embassy grounds to try and wean everyone from Barren Materialism. It got as far as the drawing-board stage before being shot down. Mercifully, political reasons intervened. For who would consecrate such a structure? The style was a sort of Primrose Hill Wesleyan. I believe John Betjeman was approached, but nothing came of it. The Russian Mission was particularly touchy. Their Chargé was a curious piece of Volga folklore called Damnovich. He had a sort of three-dimensional Marxist smile. He had been eaten into by the dialectic. One day he disappeared from sight and it was strongly rumoured that he had committed hara-kiri in the most original style. He had received a reproof for some minor dereliction of duty and took it so much to heart that he made the honourable amend by having himself marked TOP SECRET and carried out to the incinerator where he perished along with Confidential Waste. Clever, no? But not half as tortuous as Reggie Subtitle who was determined that his brother was not going to inherit a bean when he died. His will was a masterpiece. He had his embalmed body sent back to the sarcophagus in Coutts’s Oxford Street Branch where it still lies in a cellar along with all his furniture and baggage. Nobody can get at it, and without it his brother cannot inherit for Reggie is still posted as Missing—Believed Absent, though all this is years ago now.

  One last example—as a warning to junior dips. This happened to me. You know that widowhood is practically a profession in Vulgaria; they were everywhere. Widows. Dressed in rustling black, eyebrows meeting in the middle, heavy moustaches.… Ninety per cent of the population is widows, or so it seems. Well, we had one of these, or rather, we acquired one. One of the Consular Clerks had perhaps won her in a Christmas raffle? How do I know? Took her instead of the turkey, or even by mistake for it? At all events, she became Mrs Threadneedle. Then her spouse tired of her, so he left his shoes and clothes by the Danube, wrote her a curt farewell on a leaf, and apparently drowned himself; in fact he panted across the frontier and returned to civil life where he is deeply respected in Banbury as an estate agent now. How were we or she to know? We wrote him off and indented for another. Meanwhile, Mrs Threadneedle, justifying her existence, raised a Point of Order. Apparently widows were no longer entitled to bonded drinks and smokes: wives, yes. Not widows. She could not quite understand this and her English was too sketchy to enable us to expose our case to her. It carried no conviction. Moreover, she had somehow been led to believe that when one was short of a British Subject, or when one had mislaid the one in hand, one could simply trot up to the Mission and select another. It was the question of bonded goods that agitated her. She took to coming up and sitting outside the Chancery door and pleading with us as we passed to and fro. Finally she decided, since there was no help for it, to select another spouse for herself so that the interrupted flow of bonded gin and Benson and Hedges might be resumed. Her choice fell upon me. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was my open face which seemed to betoken a liberal nature. At any rate, when I passed her she would point a finger at me and cry “I will ’ave ’im.” It caused a good deal of innocent amusement to all but myself. I was scared stiff. Soon she made grabs at my han
d to kiss. The situation had become critical. I could only get to my office now by climbing in at the window; moreover I could only visit my colleagues in the same furtive way. You can imagine how tiring this proved to be. My footsteps ploughed up the flower-beds. My muscles ached. I lost weight. There seemed no way of getting rid of the lady. Once she even came into my office with a priest who blessed me with a sprig of hyssop and covered a despatch with holy water. She was paying to have me softened up. I was in extremis. Finally I consulted Dovebasket, and it was thanks to his genius that the worst was averted. Taking his advice, I called in Thurston and, clearing my throat, put the matter to him. He was a huge fellow, Chancery Guard.

  “Thurston” I said, “you have rather a sharp choice before you. You have been drunk on duty for the sixth time running and H.E. has decided to tell the F.O. You know what the result will be, don’t you?”

  He pulled a shaggy forelock and drew on the carpet with his big toe. “Now” I went on, “he has left the whole matter to my discretion. I have been pleading with him on your behalf; but it seems to me that your whole trouble is that you are a bachelor. You have too much time on your hands and not enough responsibility. Now if you married, I might reconsider the whole thing; moreover, if you married Mrs Threadneedle I might even upgrade and post you to somewhere where the pay is better.” I let all this sink in a bit. The fellow blenched, as well he might; but I pointed out that married men received splendid allowances and decent houses to live in. “Go away and debate the matter and let me have your reply not later than this evening.” The firmness of my tone, the sweetness of my voice had a deep effect on him. By that evening he had made his choice: Mrs Threadneedle would become Mrs. Thurston. Imagine my relief. But the strange thing was that the marriage worked: Thurston signed the Pledge and started a new life. When I left, they were both singing in the choir. Say what you like, there must be something in religion.

  5

  The Little Affair in Paris

  I wonder if I ever told you (said Antrobus) about the little affair in Paris? No? Well, normally I don’t care to rake it up, it’s too painful. But today I was reminded of it when I filled in my Insurance Medical. O’Toole swam into my mind’s eye. My God, you have no idea.

  The thing was I was going on leave and made the mistake of asking Polk-Mowbray if there was any little service I could perform for him in the capitals through which I was to pass. This, as you know, is the mere rhetoric of diplomacy; nobody but a swine would say yes there was. But he did. Fixing me with somewhat watery eyes he said in a dumb pleading tone: “You could be invaluable to me, Antrobus. Your mature judgement, your winning ways, your paternal touch.…” All this may have been true as far as it went. “I have a delinquent nephew called O’Toole” he went on “who is studying medicine in Paris. I fear that something terrible may befall him. He is baroque, quite baroque. His first report says that he is ‘carrément funeste’ whatever that is.” Mowbray’s French is somewhat abraded like mine. I mean we can both say “Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie” with quite a good accent when passing through Customs, but though it creates atmosphere it is not much of a help.

  I braced myself and pointed upwind. “Come, be a pal” he said. “All I ask is that you look him up and send me a Confidential Report on him. You may have much in common, who knows? After all, you’ll be staying a day or so to cadge a free meal and rub noses with MacSalmon’s Mission, won’t you? Spare an afternoon for my wandering bairn.”

  Put this way it seemed cruel to refuse. I accepted—O woe to me, yes, I accepted. But the thing troubled me. As I rubbed on the mint-flavoured aftershave in the mirror of the Orient Express I looked at myself with affectionate misgivings. So beautiful and so Put-Upon.

  All the omens were against me. I arrived in Paris during one of those long national holidays which can sometimes last a week. Nothing was open. No duty car. liven the Mission was locked up with everyone away. Even the Charge was away hunting. The empty shell of the Embassy was in the charge of an illiterate washerwoman and a Chancery Guard smelling of absinthe. I had been counting on a sponge, food and lodging with some junior who would be proud to know me and house me. But more serious still was my lolly situation. I had hardly any real script on me and none of the crisp and crackling. I had drawn the usual vouchers for travel which would have enabled me to refill my tanks at selected points and leave not a wrack behind. Couldn’t even change travellers’ cheques supposing I had any. And here I was faced with the prospects of a hotel bill as well. What to do? I pondered as I studied the news bulletin in the Chancery. There was not a name I knew on the Mission, not a friendly face. And my God, what low batting averages. I read down the list with sinking heart. Musgrave, Hoppner, Pratt, Brown … all names now famous to Interpol, but then unknown. They were all fledglings. It was a newly anointed Mission as far as I could see. Well, I walked round to try and raise the wind at Goupil, the Crillon, the Ritz and so on; nowhere could I find a hall porter I knew. Moreover my train did not leave till Monday. I would have to spend the weekend in Paris with nothing open but places of cultural repair like the Louvre—places where I might be exposed to an unmanning dose of unwanted culture. I knew how dangerous the French were. Anything but that. I walked about much struck by the many shops which stocked out-of-the-way literature and, if flush, might have bought a copy of Unplanned Paternity, being some hints to mothers by an Unplanned Father; which I believe was written by De Mandeville and Dovebasket under a pseudonym. But I daren’t play fast and loose with my few francs. I had a glass of Prune Magic in a bistro and reflected on my lot. Finally I thought of O’Toole. Perhaps he might help? I unearthed his address. It was within walking distance of where I was. No harm, I thought, could come of passing that way, of conferring a timely nod, a cheerful word on O’Toole. I found the place quite easily, but it was fearfully sinister, and there was a woman in a sort of box, who watched me carefully. She jumped when I mentioned the name and produced a bloodstained cleaver from under her apron. She asked me to give him a message but I didn’t manage to get its import. Yet it sounded menacing. She punctuated with the cleaver. I raised my bowler and pressed on up the motheaten staircase to number thirteen. The bell being out of order I rapped with my gamp. There was a pause. Then suddenly everything happened as if in a film. The door flew open, something grabbed me by the necktie, dragged me within and shoved me up against a wall. The door shut behind me with a bang, and a knife was pressed into my tie. I was in the presence of O’Toole. “One word and I spit you” he hissed. I was far from uttering a word. I was stunned. He tugged me into a sort of studio and threw me on a couch where I rolled all over my bowler. “You have come from Them” he said “to spy on me. I told my uncle that the next one would suffer. And you’re him.” Ignoring his grammar I tried to adopt an ingratiating, a fragrant manner. It was no go. I was up against something beyond me. O’Toole looked like Dylan Thomas after a week on the tiles. Muffler and pork pie hat and all. He looked the hard core of Something. Clearly the soft answer would not suit. Moreover he smelt of plum brandy. He was beside himself. “Here I am beside myself with troubles and that manumitted mooncalf sends people to spy on me.” His underlip trembled. Clearly the chap was hard pressed. I retrieved my bowler and cleared what was left of my throat. “Listen O’Toole” I said. “Calm your nerves and expose your case to me. Perhaps I can help.” He gave a cry at this and advanced on me with knife raised. “Perhaps you can” he said. “Turn out your pockets.” I’m afraid there was no abiding joy to be drawn from my wallet. Not content in spite of my honest look, he went through my pockets with a practised hand. No, this miserable sum was all I possessed. He walked up and down in a frenzy stabbing at the air. “What’s the problem O’Toole?” I asked, and something feline and caressing in my tone must have touched a chord for he gave a strangled sob and said: “My rent is overdue and they are going to take Miriam away. They are distraining on me this evening.” French bailiffs with heavy sideboards were on their way to do away with Pol
k-Mowbray’s bairn. It was sad to see one so young so overwrought. “But they won’t get her” he hissed. “I’d rather die.” Gradually I brought myself to bear on the situation, to clarify it; some of what I tell you I only learned subsequently, of course. But for the nonce this reference to his paramour (it would take a Latin to distrain on a girl) nonplussed me. “Who and where is Miriam?” I asked looking round this gutted building. He pointed the tip of his awfully cutty knife—I can still show you the nick in my shirt where he pressed it home. The electric light had been cut off and the gloom was heavy; but in one corner of the room stood a sort of mummy case. He pointed wildly. “She’s worth two hundred and fifty pounds” he said. “Moreover she is my aunt.” Upon my word the damned thing was an articulated skeleton, the sort of thing medical men use to frighten each other on rag day. It was complete I mean down to the toe. It sagged from a hook in its neck; when you got closer it gave a queer sort of smile. I shuddered. But always loth to abandon a train of reasoning I asked O’Toole to exfoliate a bit, to expand, to explain. Well he had been brought up by a family of sawbones in Dublin who were devoted to the principles of the French Revolution. They had insisted that he study in Paris; Miriam his aunt had given her body to science for the honour of the family. It was their only heirloom. Apart from her they owned nothing. But magnanimously they gave it to him on his departure telling him, one supposes, to try and live up to it: and if not to flog it. Now it was going to be distrained upon. The more you see of life the less real it gets.… The fellow may have been a dastard but I could not help feeling a twinge of sympathy. He was feeling the draught. By skilful questioning I found out the rest. Apparently they could not distrain on him, only on his property; he had managed to get most of his clothes away by walking up and down the stairs in three or four suits at a time and stripping them off in the gents at the local bistro where his friend Coco kept an eye on them. “But if I tried to carry a bag down the concierge would be on me with that bloody cleaver. I shall have to leave my bags. But what about Miriam?” I could see no way round the affair. Then I saw his eyes narrow; he looked at me in rather a Pointed Way as if he were about to ask for a slice. “Why do you gaze on me like that?” I cried. I felt some ghastly notion coming over him. Nor was I wrong. “I have it” he cried waving his knife with renewed menace. “You say you’ve come to help me; well, so you shall.” He opened the window and pointed into the street. “You will stand down there and I will lower Miriam to you” he said. “But if there is so much as a greenstick fracture on her when I get down your fate is sealed.” I tried to remonstrate. After all, I pleaded, I was a British subject, a CMG, a Rotarian and a well-known handbells player. Surely he could not expect me to stand about on a Paris street corner with an unclothed aunt in my arms. He did. He poked me again. “And don’t think you can leg it” he added. “I can throw this thing. Look!” He whirled round and pinked the kitchen cupboard.