Boxer, Beetle (22 page)

‘Sorry,’ said Sinner.

And then Evelyn reached for his hand and hauled him up towards her, clamping her mouth over his.

Sinner was surprised, but he thought he might as well do what she wanted – he still felt an unusual fondness for this demanding girl. He could taste the wine on her breath and feel her tears on his cheeks. Like rotten fruit, women’s bodies were too soft, yielded too easily.

‘Please …,’ she said, looking into his eyes, and lifted the hem of her dress. He got the sense that she hadn’t known that she wanted this even one minute earlier but now that she did know she couldn’t wait even one minute longer.

She was too low on the piano stool, so he picked her up and moved her awkwardly on to the piano itself, her arms wrapped around his neck. As he undid his flies, she pushed her knickers down to her ankles and spread her trembling knees, still kissing him as if she were trying to steal a piece of chewing gum out of his mouth.

(At that moment Leonard Bruiseland was walking past the drawing room. He wondered who was so thoughtless as to practise the piano after most of the house was already in bed, and then realised from the ugly, thudding chords that it could only be Evelyn Erskine. He was about to go in and reproach her, but then reasoned brightly that at least if she was playing the piano she couldn’t be off fornicating.)

Abruptly Sinner entered her, and she gasped and bit into his lip. The angles were wrong and he had to stand on awkward tiptoes, feeling a bit as if he were doing some special exercise in Frink’s gym, sharply aware of the moon-drowning purplish night sky outside the drawing room windows and of the piano’s cold rosewood against the skin of his forearms. ‘Are you going to … ? You know that you mustn’t. … Not now,’ Evelyn murmured uncertainly, but Sinner knew he was in no danger of that, so he kept going – trying to be gentle, but thinking about some of his favourite boys from the Caravan to keep himself hard – until Evelyn had what she wrongly took to be an orgasm and went slack in his arms. She winced again as he withdrew and a trickle of blood chased him down her thigh. He helped her down to the carpet, where she lay on her side, panting; he sat beside her. The whole thing had only lasted three or four minutes.

‘Have you ever been with a woman before?’ she said after a long time.

‘Yeah.’

‘How many times?’

‘A few times.’

‘Do you hate it?’

‘No.’

‘Good. You know, it’s lucky you are how you are, most of the time. Imagine if you made it your business to go after people’s wives. Think of the jealous husbands. Legions of them. You’d have been shot dead a dozen times by now.’ She stroked his hand. ‘Well, that’s that. Now at least I have a proper secret from my dear fiancé. He’ll never have the whole of me. And even if I don’t have all those glorious affairs, I can say I was deflowered on a piano in a country house by a foul-mouthed Jewish boxer. How fantastic. And all my babies will be Jewish according to that German oaf.’ She laughed, but he didn’t laugh with her, so she looked up at him and said, ‘Oh, come on, doesn’t it get dull being so surly and serious all the time? Never even smiling? I bet you wish you could. I bet you would if you knew no one would see. I mean, I know I do a good job of being blithe and ironical and all that, but it doesn’t mean I’m utterly without. …’ When he still didn’t reply, she scowled. ‘For Christ’s sake, say something to me. Instead of just grunting and shrugging all the time. Say something you mean. Once. Please. Or can’t you?’

There was another long silence and then Sinner said softly, ‘I don’t want that prick to get my body.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your brother.’

‘What about your body?’

‘I sold myself to him.’

‘Philip?’

‘He owns me. For ever. For his experiments and everything else. I made a bargain.’

‘My God, I thought you were with him because—’

‘I don’t give a toss what he does with me now. But after. …’

‘After?’

‘After I’m dead. He’s going to keep me. Probably wants to measure my bones or something. Like in that picture of
his. I don’t want that. I’d rather be buried alive like your slug.’

‘You want a Jewish burial?’

‘I don’t give a toss about any Yid burial. I just don’t want him to have me for ever. I want to be buried in a hole with no name on it so he can never find me. I could run away now, but if I’m in a hole with my name on it then he’ll find me and dig me up. He’ll take what belongs to him.’ Then Sinner got to his feet. ‘I need a drink.’

‘Please don’t. I must go and wash, but it’s too depressing to think about you getting drunk on your own.’

‘Who the fuck am I going to drink with around here?’

‘There’s always Casper Bruiseland,’ said Evelyn.

She’d suggested it as a joke, but Sinner said: ‘Will he have booze?’

‘He invariably does.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Locked up upstairs.’

But when Sinner arrived at the door of the observatory, which Erskine’s father had installed at the top of the east wing in 1914, he found it ajar. Inside were Millicent Bruiseland, on the sofa, and two unctuous costly pale limp shiny things, one of which was a silk dressing gown that contained the other.

‘Hello, Sinner,’ said Millicent.

‘You’re Erskine’s boy,’ said the unctuous costly pale limp shiny thing that was not a silk dressing gown. ‘I watched you arrive.’

‘Who are you?’ said Sinner.

‘Didn’t they tell you about me? I’m the monster in the attic.’

‘Casper’s not allowed downstairs,’ said Millicent. ‘Father says he has a chronic disease. Battle has to bring him all his meals. It’s not very nice for him.’

‘Yes, my father always feels obliged to bring me with the rest of the family, although I thank my lucky stars he at least bothered to find me a room with a lavatory this time. Still,
I’m happy to say that dear Millie has always been very kind to her brother. She runs errands for me,’ said Casper, lifting up a fat brown bottle with Polish writing on the label.

‘Is that booze?’

‘Straight to the point, I see. Yes, it is. Would you like some? I’ve quite a lot of it.’

Sinner sat down in an armchair and took the bottle from Casper, who opened a new one for himself.

‘Careful with that. It’s Polish honey mead. Very strong. It’s hardly the best stuff in the house, but I only ask Millie to steal what no one else would ever think to drink, otherwise Battle might notice. Before you know it you’ll be absolutely desolated.’

‘I ain’t easily “desolated”,’ said Sinner, overconfident for the third time that evening. ‘And my dad’s Polish.’

‘Oh, really? Well, then,
na zdrowie!
’

They both drank. ‘You ever been to the Caravan?’ Sinner croaked, wiping his mouth. He had managed not to gag but he felt as if his adam’s apple were about to fall out of his neck and roll down the stairs.

‘Don’t torture me. I’ve heard so much about it.’

‘You’d do all right.’ Though not with Sinner, who hated Casper’s type.

‘I hope I would. You, on the other hand, could do a lot better than my cousin,’ said Casper. ‘You’re a perfect vision and he’s such a creepy-crawly. I made a pass at him myself once – just out of pity, I thought it would do him good – but he didn’t notice, or at least he pretended he didn’t. Evelyn and I have always agreed that her brother could be perfectly happy if he could just admit to himself what the rest of us already know, but he’s so spineless. In fact, I’m astonished he had the courage to bring you here. Astonished, and pleased. I would certainly make advances on you myself, but I’m afraid I’ve been almost powerless in that respect for some time. …’

Casper rambled on in his damp spidery voice. About an
hour later, Sinner finished his bottle. He looked up. Millie had departed at some point, but Casper had never stopped talking: ‘… And of course they were just about to legalise buggery in Germany if it hadn’t been for the silly old stock market crash.’ Sinner hurled himself forward out of the armchair, then crawled to the door on his hands and knees. It was seven or eight months since he’d drunk anything stronger than Erskine’s second-rate beer, and he felt like a child again.

‘Oh, are you off?’ said Casper. ‘Well, it was delightful to meet you. Send my regards to Philip.’

‘They really … they really keep you locked up because you drink too much?’ slurred Sinner.

‘Because I drink too much? God, no. As you can see, my dear, I have no trouble holding my alcohol. I’ve dined with all the drinking societies in Oxford. One learns.’

‘Why, then?’

‘I kept getting caught wanking off farmhands. Father said it was this or the sanatorium.’

Sinner staggered down the stairs. He remembered that he was supposed to be sleeping in Erskine’s room, but he didn’t want to go there, so he decided to find somewhere he could safely pass out until morning without anyone finding him. Doors and oil paintings and umbrellas and lamps and books swerved past him at reckless speeds; the moonlight came in at odd angles and his shadow seemed to bark at his heels like a dog.

Some while later, he found himself vomiting into some sort of complicated metal cage. He pursued the vomit inside and curled up into a ball, spikes digging uncomfortably into his ribs and shins. He dozed off; but no more than ten minutes later he was awoken by lights and voices. He already felt much more clear-headed for having voided his stomach. He tried not to make any noise, wondering where he was. Inside a torture device? An experimental piano? A very advanced
safety coffin? A mechanical model of Evelyn Erskine’s womb? He couldn’t really see out.

‘Couldn’t we do this tomorrow?’ said the first voice. ‘I’m very tired and I’m sure there’ll be time for a chat between the lectures.’

‘I’m afraid privacy is of the utmost importance to this discussion,’ said the second voice. ‘That’s why we had to wait for everyone else to go to bed. Pour yourself a drink and sit down.’

‘I say, something smells a bit odd.’

‘I can’t smell anything.’

‘I think it’s coming from Mr Erskine’s calculating machine.’

‘Please do sit down and pay attention, Morton.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Good. Now, I’ll get straight down to business. You’re familiar, I trust, with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?’

‘Superficially.’

‘Do you believe in them?’

‘Of course not. They’re thoroughly discredited, as every schoolboy knows. Copied from a nineteenth-century satirical dialogue about Napoleon. You don’t mean to say you think differently?’

‘I think they have the ring of truth, and I think it’s very easy bargh glargh glargh bargh snargh to trump up evidence for a charge of plagiary. But it’s not for me to say. The point is, the average man has been taught to scoff at them. They’re no use to us any more.’

‘To us?’

‘To fascism.’

‘I’m not sure they were much use to fascism in the first place.’

‘Perhaps not to your brand. But to those of us who aren’t in bed with the Jews—’

‘Sir, I—’

‘—they were once a very useful way of knocking some
sense into people.’ Sinner smelt cigar smoke. ‘So what can we put in their place? That is the question Erskine and I asked ourselves several months ago. We concluded that with a little bit of trickery – no more than the Jew himself uses every time he goes to the vegetable market – we could achieve something masterful. You know about the
London Jewish Sentry
?’

‘I’m aware of it, yes.’

‘I thought so. The idea, you understand, was to spill a few secrets that the Jews would never spill themselves, and to do it so that people would have no reason to doubt what they read. Propaganda with an honourable heart. Very effective. Now, publishing a newspaper isn’t cheap, especially when it has to be done largely in secret, but Erskine and I felt that money should be no object when the future of the British Empire is at stake. We took out our cheque books quite happily.’

‘You mean to say that you and Mr Erskine were funding the whole thing?’

‘Don’t play stupid with me, Morton. As you must know, we had no choice but to involve one or two dullards from Mosley’s gang. Erskine and I don’t go to London very often, and they know the lie of the land. But I always knew it would be our undoing. Those bloody Blackshirts – I’d rather entrust my secrets to a six-year-old girl. Which is how, over the last few months, Erskine and I came to be receiving letters of the most despicable kind. All anonymous. The first ones were just full of sinister innuendo. But now we’ve been threatened with exposure if we don’t hand over cash.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘Yes, my boy, blackmail. That’s what it is. Nothing less. I’m glad you realise that. And Erskine and I wouldn’t normally give a damn. If it did get in the papers that we’d been paying for the
London Jewish Sentry
, we’d be heroes to every fascist in the world. Hitler would probably give us a medal. If we were vain men, we’d be begging this blackmailer to go to
The
Times
. But the point is, it would set back the cause. Not only would we lose influence – and before long, mark my words, Parliament will be trying to take us to war with Germany, so we will need our influence more than ever – but all our work on
London Jewish Sentry
would be wasted before it had really borne fruit. We can’t let that happen. But we also don’t want to give in to a common criminal. So we won’t pay a penny. What do you say to that?’

‘Quite right. I think you should go to the police.’

‘Don’t taunt me, Morton. You know perfectly well we can’t go to the police. They’d start poking their noses everywhere. A disgraceful affair like this has to be settled man to man.’

There was a pause. ‘You’re not suggesting …,’ began Morton.

‘I’ve been watching your face, my boy. You’re as guilty as they come. You’re not a real fascist, you’re just a blasted opportunist.’

‘Oh, please be serious – does Mr Erskine realise you’re making these accusations?’

‘Since you’re marrying his daughter he’s had to pretend you’re a decent fellow, and by now he’s spent so long pretending that he doesn’t know any better. He wouldn’t listen if I tried to tell him. But now you’re going to come with me and confess to his face. Then you’ll break off the engagement, which, by the way, is to your own advantage – I assume you didn’t realise what you’d have been faced with on the wedding night – and you’ll make some sort of restitution to Erskine and me. Then I expect you’ll either hang yourself or go off and live amongst the wogs for the rest of your life.’