Sauve Qui Peut: Stories Page 4

  Well it was a very subdued public servant that made his way down that creaking stair, tipping his bowler to the charmless dromedary in the box who still waited for the distraining force before launching an assault on number thirteen. It felt cold in the street. I felt a certain loss of reality coming over me; I mean it didn’t seem to be me any more, my intrinsic me, waiting there gazing up to where, swaying slightly in the breeze, the bones of this venerable aunt descended towards me on a piece of stout cord. I took the pass all right. Miriam, rather heavier than you would expect, was safely in arms. “Now what?” I called anxiously up into the sky. A policeman had appeared down the corner of the street. He stopped dead in his tracks bemused by the spectacle. I felt deeply conscious of the unclothed nature of the specimen and shipped off my light green plastic mack to work on to her arms. The policeman watched this for a while, pale to the gills, and then muttering something about special tastes, turned round and ran back along the avenue blowing his whistle and calling for witnesses. This sort of thing could only happen at Lourdes, he must have said to himself. There was no time to explain and apologize for now O’Toole bounded from the door like a Michelin advertisement in his last three suits and four pullovers. “Run” he cried, and carried away by panic, I broke into a palsied gallop. We shared the burden of Miriam, bursting like a bomb into the bistro. “Saved” cried O’Toole. I don’t know whether you have ever been around with a skeleton in a green plastic mack, old boy. I don’t know how to describe the feeling.… It’s uncanny. Most of the clients in the bistro paled under their tan, removed their pipes, seemed about to speak, and then just swallowed. O’Toole planked Miriam on a bar-stool and called for three tots. Coco, his friend, took the whole thing quite normally. I believe he thought that Miriam had been murdered by O’Toole and then put together in an idle moment for the sake of company on wet Saturday evenings. I don’t know. Anyway a long confab took place about getting a decent price for her. This of course caused ears to prick up and ribald comments to form on various lips. Coco was for selling her to the Clinique des Pieds Sensibles, but once more we were stymied by this public holiday. It was shut. I was so worked up now that I drank Miriam’s glass off. Along the street there was trouble starting; fortunately the police had thrown a net around this house whose inhabitants spent their time cutting up aunts only to fall upon the distraining party, bailiffs and beadles and whatnot dressed in opera hats and cloaks. Thank God we were just clear; the police arrested the distrainers who resisted arrest violently. Watching them I felt no joy; only misgiving. For there on the stool, smiling slightly, sat this damned skeleton. We lay low for hours while Coco gave us drinks and marked them on a score card. He told us about his political life. He turned out to be a red hot revolutionary who walked about Paris at night chalking “Coco est traitre” and “Français à moi” on the walls. His party had a resounding name but according to O’Toole only one member, himself. Eclectic stuff. But time was getting on; I had to take myself off and said so. “By God you are going to stay with me to the end” cried O’Toole, “or by the bones of Polk-Mowbray I’ll slit your F.O. weasand.” Polk-Mowbray! I thought of him with such distaste at that moment. Here I was penniless and trapped by this aunt-fixated and fuliginous fool.

  Coco tried to cheer us up with a song—and he had a fine set of pipes—but I was in no mood for joy. O’Toole thought deeply. Then he said he had it. There was one person who would pay him a decent price for Miriam, a chap called Raoul. But Raoul lived some way outside Paris. We would have to borrow some money somehow. He would pawn a couple of suits with Coco for the journey. “I don’t want to go on any journey” I wailed. “Silence Anchovy” he thundered. “We are in this thing to the death now.” It was what I very much feared; but I felt weak and defenceless. Miriam had sort of moulded me to her bony will. I won’t describe our stately progress across Paris—I’m saving it for the second volume of my memoirs. O’Toole was now under the influence and disposed to be lighthearted to the point of coarseness. But have you ever turned round in a bus-queue and seen a skeleton in a plastic mack at your elbow? We spread dismay wherever we went. On the top of a bus he sat Miriam in the seats reserved for the Mutilés de La Guerre and refused to buy a ticket, saying that Miriam had fallen on the Marne. The ticket-collector’s face worked, his moustache swivelled through 365 degrees but what could he say? How could he prove anything? Several times we lost our way. Once I had to stand alone holding Miriam while O’Toole visited one of those tin shelters where you can see the customers’ legs underneath. I was standing on the steps of St Sulpice when another policeman came up to make conversation; did he fear a riot? Did he suspect a crime? I shall never know. He tried to address me, very civilly I mean, and pointed at Miriam. “C’est la plume de ma tante” I tried to explain, “Mademoiselle Miriam.” He said “Tiens” and raised his shako. But I was so overcome by this effort to explain, and by O’Toole’s prolonged absence, that I rushed into the church and hid in a side-chapel. I had hardly started the Lord’s Prayer with Miriam kneeling beside me when a verger, white to the lips, came up and hissed at me. “Get that thing out of here, you are frightening the customers” was clearly the import of his remarks. Foiled in my intercession with the All-Highest I retreated to the steps and once more met up with O’Toole. Another bus-ride followed, and yet another. I began to feel that everyone in the city must now have seen us with our strange companion. Some thought we were advertising orthopaedic devices. Others that we were Burke and Hare, grave-robbers on a spree. The most charitable felt that we were enjoying a rather unhealthy drollery on our way to the boneyard.

  From time to time I half awoke from my tranced state and prayed aloud. But Miriam only smiled. Never have I felt so much the centre of attention. But worse was to follow. We arrived deep in the countryside at a place which sounded like St Abdomen La Boue. We dragged Miriam across a churchyard watched by the furtive peasantry huddled behind trees and in copses. We sounded a bell, a door opened and there was Raoul, beret on head and pipe in mouth; we thought we were safe especially as he was overjoyed to see Miriam and agreed on the spot to find her a good home. In fact he waltzed round the room with her in a paroxysm of delight. Then he stopped and his face clouded. Apparently he also was in some kind of trouble. He had fallen foul of the local parson and been denounced from the St Abdomen pulpit on suspicion of practising black magic; the thing was he was trying to grow salads in his garden by the Rudolf Steiner bio-organic method. I am not clear about it but I gathered that in order to get the things to push one had to catch them at full moon, and walk round them reciting mystic runes and playing on a pipe. Enough to cause the darkest suspicions I’ll allow. In fact things had become so hot that he was thinking of shutting up the house and returning to Paris. While he was explaining all this the phone rang. He answered it and jumped a foot in the air. “They are on their way to arrest me. Someone has told the police that they saw people dragging bodies out of the graveyard next door and bringing them in here. There is no time to lose.” I clutched my umbrella until my knuckles turned white. What new horrors lay in store for us? Outside a sullen church bell began to beat; one could hear the muttering crowd; some stones pelted against the front gate. We sat staring at each other unnerved. Then afar off across the countryside one heard the yapping of a police car racing towards us. “Quick” cried Raoul. “We must escape.” Once again I was seized with vertigo. I cannot remember clearly what happened—how we found ourselves in Raoul’s little car, all of us. I sat in the back with Miriam on my knee. As we roared out of the gate in a rain of clods a demoniac scream went up from a thousand throats. Their worst suspicions had been confirmed. A scream of pure horror. Surely a bit exaggerated, but then the untutored peasantry are like that. After all, I was still quite tidily dressed and wearing my bowler. There was no need to imagine that.…

  Across country we went like the wind followed by a couple of black cars full of moustaches. They were gaining on us. “Faster” cried O’Toole, and Raoul pressed down unti
l the thing was level with the floorboards. We were cornering much too fast to judge by the scraping noise. Nor could this speed be maintained. We came round a corner and were confronted by a locked level crossing. It was too late to brake. Raoul made a majestic attempt to leap the obstacle; we careered off to one side, through a field and then went smack into the heart of a haystack. I think I must have lost consciousness; all was smoke, darkness and tickle. But when at last I was disinterred I felt a great sense of relief for Miriam was no more. She had been dashed into a thousand fragments. So indeed had we all. The gallant constabulary disinterred us, placed us on ladders and took us back to the ambulance. The next thing was I woke up in the next bed to O’Toole in the local hospital at Moisson. I ached all over but nothing was broken. My nose was blue—this part here. It was a relatively lucky escape. As I lay in a half trance I heard two medical men arguing about our case and the treatment thereof. O’Toole was shamming dead but listening carefully. One voice said “I disagree with you Armand. The Cordon Rouge is powerful enough in a case like this.” The other voice shook its head and said: “In my opinion only the Imperial will answer.” A frail tremor of joy fluttered in my breast. I blessed a medical profession enlightened enough to prescribe vintage champagne in such cases; it is good for shock, good for bruises, good for everything. Moreover Imperial Tokay, Mumm’s Cordon Rouge … I didn’t really care which. The voices died away and we were alone again. I chuckled and leaned over to O’Toole. “Did you hear that?” I said. “We are going to get a champers treatment. Isn’t it bully?” But he was bright green, his lips moved in prayer. “Anchovy” he said at last, “you know not what you are saying. Your blithe innocence cuts me to the heart. The Imperial and the Cordon Rouge are the largest suppositories known to science” My God! I had forgotten the obsession of the French medical man with the homely suppos. It is prescribed for everything from coated tongue to tertiary gangrene. I don’t wish to argue its merits or demerits as a treatment. I have no doubt that in many a difficult case it works. But it is prescribed for everything. There is no way round it. There I was at the mercy of men with these weird proclivities. How would I ever face The Office again? A cry burst from my lips. “Never!” I meant it. I was seized by a sort of frenzy. In a moment I had stripped off my bandages, and vaulted out of my nightshirt into my trousers. Bowler and umbrella were on the end of the bed. “Goodbye O’Toole” I cried in the voice of a lion and with one bound was at the door. I passed the nurse on the stairs. She was carrying a sort of bazooka on a tray. I think she only caught sight of a flash of white as I streaked past her out into the surrounding countryside. The emergency brought out all that was most resourceful in Antrobus. I thumbed a ride on a van into Paris and made my way back to the Embassy determined to sleep on the doorstep if necessary. But by a stroke of good luck Glamis Tadpole had come back and was now receiving. All my troubles were at an end. I accepted a glass of Scotch and relaxed in the armchair while he made pleasant conversation. “I must say” he said “you look very relaxed. You must have had a jolly weekend.”

  Little did he know. Sometimes in my dreams Miriam returns to visit me; but she has begun to fade. Only now I have got into the habit of by-passing Paris on my journeys. A man of my age and in my position of trust can’t be too careful, can he?

  6

  Taking the Consequences

  I have never (said Antrobus) ceased to preach against paper games in the leisure hours of the service; either for entertainment of friends or for the killing of time. I have several times found them a Grave Danger. Nor do I make any exception—though perhaps the game called “Consequences” is the worst in this respect. To my regret Polk-Mowbray could never be got round to this view; for him no dinner party was complete without a vapid hand of Pontoon, or Mimsy or Bellweather. AJ1 the pencils were co-opted from Chancery, and all the expensive minute-paper. Down we would sit to wrestle with some inane problem, feeling like a human fritter; nor could we say him nay. He ordered us to play. It was inhuman, and at times I got so indignant that I thought I should get circles under my prose or lose my vibrato or both. But Nemesis was waiting in the podgy person of the Baron Blenkinhoorn, the newly arrived correspondent of the Deutsches Sauerkraut news agency, a powerful organ of West German opinion. He was a very serious man. His notepaper had a crown and garter gules. He wore heavy spectacles and beard brushed back against the wind like Epping Forest. Whatever you told him he wrote down instantly in a huge pad and telegraphed to his organ. He lived in the Vulgaria Hotel and was rumoured to sleep with a pistol under his pillow. Nor did his seriousness make him endearing, no. Once De Mandeville persuaded him to publish Polk-Mowbray’s obituary by uttering a false press release. For a man as superstitious as our Ambassador this gave him quite a fright and the Baron had some trouble exculpating himself. Quite a huff grew up between them and it was only rarely that the Baron came into the Chancery for a brief untainted bit of info. On some such visit he must have managed to break down the morale of Dovebasket and make a hireling of him, for his despatches were now full of Inside Info, things he would never have known had he not had an accomplice. For instance that Toby Imhof was even then working on bottled cat’s breath to put down mouseholes and had already patented the perfected version of Snarlex, jujube for the tired parent. Where could he have found out I mean? Even the little day-to-day accidents which any normal Embassy has to endure without telling the press. The Baron knew them all and sent them to his organ which duly printed. Nothing appeared to be sacred. It was the year that Angela was sent down for writing Just Married on the back of a police car; Dovebasket, who was mad about her and had been jilted revenged himself by meddling with the taps on the blue room bidet—to such good effect that the wretched girl found herself pinned to the ceiling by a water-jet and had to be got down with ladders. You see what I mean? He finally had us looking over our shoulders. Polk-Mowbray bit his nails to the quick. Particularly as all this stuff was joyfully translated by our German Mission and sent back to the F.O. The Foreign Secretary read with popping eye the Baron’s account of De Mandeville’s dress reform movement which insisted on handbags for men and the wearing of a strange new hat called a Boadicea, with side flaps. The wires began to buzz and we found ourselves issuing Categorical Denials or Studied Evasions in batches of ten. Things could not go on like this. But how to get the Baron out? If only we could get him declared persona non grata by the Vulgarians.… But his integrity was perfect, he neither smoked nor drank, and women were mere furniture. We ran through a number of schemes, mostly counsels of desperation, like introducing highly trained crabs into his bath. De Mandeville who was white with rage tried to get up a plot to murder him outright by waxing the dance floor to a preternaturally high gloss and inviting the Baron to a ball where Angela, who had agreed to sacrifice herself, was to lead him out for a Waltz and then turn him loose to break his neck. We were foiled. The Baron didn’t dance, and of those who did several broke their collar bones and ankles. No, he was a tough nut to crack. We put Scooter our secret service fellow on to him, to study his little weaknesses; but he had few, unless you count spending hours and hours alone playing on a portable clavicord.

  Meanwhile the Revelations went on; some of them were so extraordinary that Polk-Mowbray nearly went out of his mind. The Foreign Sec. wrote him in prose of a secular tautness, asking him whether or not the following were true: a secret meeting with Mrs Krushchev to negotiate a pact without telling H.M.G. Another less secret with Pandit Nehru outside a public cabinet d’aisance in Bombay. A third with Stalin. A fourth with the Baroness of Monrovia (a dusky Ambassadress) … And so on. “Antrobus” he cried out, “somehow this must stop. Simple denials cannot meet the case. Everyone believes the press, nobody believes a dip. This man has set out to lose me my froggings. Think, man, think.” I thought until I throbbed. Then the idea crept over me that recently we had not heard very much of Dovebasket; he had been living a life of strange and rather suspicious demureness. Something Told Me that if he were not directl
y responsible for those leaks he might at least have a notion about what to do. I went to see him and tried to rouse his manlier feelings by describing the emotions of Polk-Mowbray. He only laughed like a faun and said “So he has had enough has he? I was wondering when he would break. Yes, I know what to do, but it will take money and time. For a couple of hundred I could suborn Blenkinhoorn.” The price was outrageous of course but we were trapped. “So you are responsible after all” I blazed at him, white to the tentacles and practically springing a front stud. “Explain yourself.”