Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel (15 page)

I laughed heartily at this.

Lord Malquist explained, ‘Style, Mr Moon, is an aesthetic, inbred and disengaged, and in such precarious times these are virtues.’ He said that ‘the battle’ had been discredited and therefore it was time to withdraw and give an example,
Moon concluded, since he was getting near the bottom of the page.

He read it through with satisfaction. He put all the pages together and folded them and put them in his inside pocket, slightly smeared with blood from his fresh cut. The bomb ticked on with implacable confidence.

Hurry up please, it’s time.

Moon put on his shoe and then his overcoat which he had left upstairs. He came down with the bomb muffled in his pocket. There was a letter newly arrived on the mat. Moon snatched it up impatiently and saw that it was addressed to him. He opened it and found a cheque for five hundred
guineas made out to Boswell Incorporated and signed ‘Malquist.’ For a moment he thought it was a new one, but then saw that it had been stamped ‘Refer to Drawer.’ It had come back from his bank.

He replaced the cheque in its envelope and put it in his pocket and went out of the house and began to walk quickly down the mews. It was very cold.

Moon walked south towards Piccadilly, his right shoulder humped against the wind that cut through between the buildings. He felt uneasy and took the trouble to examine his uneasiness: it began in the fact that he was moving in a state of urgency without any sense of destination to contain it. He walked south because at the back of the directionless impulse to move at all was an arrangement to meet Lord Malquist at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate, but this only provided the vector on which it would be least time-wasting to operate; the urgency was open-ended, it would last until he had resolved the matter of his bomb, or was resolved by it.

He therefore found himself in the odd position of trying to make himself receptive to those neuroses against which he had trained his instincts to protect him; and either because of the conscious effort or because of the cold wind that monopolised his sensations, all the old fears on which he now relied seemed to have abandoned him to his own drift. The scale today was not alarming.

He crossed Gurzon Street and hurried on, trying to think himself into a shudder at traffic which multiplied itself and buildings which were about to be struck down for their pride. But Piccadilly was inoffensive. It was not deserted but the volume of it was comfortable, a few cars and some pedestrians well spaced. The buildings seemed empty and light, imposing but proportionate. It was early yet but he knew that already cars and buses should have been squeezing each other from wall to wall (where were all the buses?), and shop girls and clerks and secretaries should have been dodging each other in phalanxes along the pavements, pouring into doorways that were now closed (
It’s Sunday, no it’s not
). And there was no momentum anywhere, no common impulse, no sense
even of preparation. And no noise. He had been used to having to resist the echoes of the world, the crash of steel mills, screams from burning orphanages, the tramp of hunger marches, the crack of solid rock being wrenched out of the earth and upended as a building, the roaring deific pillar of fire that bursts from the oil well… Moon stood deserted on the corner. It was a conspiracy.

He crossed the road, because that was southerly, and looked through the railings into Green Park which shined wet and windswept, desolate as Arctic tundra. Then he turned to his left, easterly, and began to walk towards the Circus, but without hope, and stopped again when he reached the right-angle of Queen’s Walk which cut south down the side of the Ritz and straight across Green Park joining the parallels of Piccadilly and the Mall; which was the hypotenuse of a bent right-angled triangle whose other two sides were Birdcage Walk and the back of Whitehall.

The Square on the Mall (or let us say the area bounded by the Mall, Queen’s Walk, Piccadilly and Lower Regent Street) is equal to the sum of the squares on Birdcage Walk (or let us say the area bounded by Birdcage Walk, Buckingham Gate, Victoria Street and Storey’s Gate) and Whitehall (or let us say the area bounded by Whitehall, Northumberland Avenue, Bridge Street and the River). Including the Horse Guards’ Parade, probably. If bent, of course.

It occurred to him that the labyrinthine riddle of London’s streets might be subjected to a single mathematical formula, one of such sophistication that it would relate the whole hopeless mess into a coherent logic. He knew that nothing would be changed by this but he no longer hoped to change things, only to keep them under control. Just inside Green Park he came across a shoe.

It was a woman’s shoe, light tan and white, an elegant shoe, in good repair. It was lying on the grass just off the
edge of the Walk, half-hidden and, when he picked it up, cold as rain. There was no reason to leave it lying there – it looked almost new – and no reason to take it away, without a one-legged lady (size 6) in mind. Moon considered the problem and then remembrance of his bomb shocked him away from such trivial distraction. He threw the shoe aside and hurried on with the beginnings of a panic because everything was calm and cold and sane.

He turned left again when he reached the Mall and then right, into St James’s Park (the right-angled triangle contained by the Mall, Birdcage Walk and the back of Whitehall). He took the path towards the water and on the bridge he saw a horse and rider. Moon jumped.

‘Mr Jones!’

‘Howdy.’

Jasper reined up.

‘Where are you off to today?’

‘Workin’ around, see my gal.’

‘I understand,’ said Moon carefully, shoring up the ruins of his many betrayals, ‘I gather you’re not a real cowboy.’ He added, ‘You only like it.’

‘Where you been gathering?’

‘Well, Mr Slaughter dropped in and—’

‘I’ll kill that cowpoke.’

Jasper Jones dug in his spurs and the horse moved on a bit.

‘He’s not there,’ Moon called.

‘He better not be.’

‘Nor’s Jane.’

Jasper wheeled his horse and circled Moon.

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’

Jasper said nothing. He kicked his horse forward, and wheeled. ‘I ought to plug you,’ he said then. ‘When did you get back?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘From Australia. You and your fancy woman.’

‘Did she tell you that?’ asked Moon. He watched him ride off in tight circles – the horse was being difficult – and called after him, ‘Mr Jones! He doesn’t want to fight any more. He told me. Don’t shoot him, Mr Jones!’

Jasper Jones looked back but didn’t call. Moon waved at him and walked away, crossing the bridge. On the far bank he looked back and saw Jasper as an equestrian statue turned his way.

Moon went on out of the park and crossed Birdcage Walk into Queen Anne’s Gate. The bomb ticked in his pocket but he had nowhere else to make for.

Surprisingly, there were several people standing around the roadway near Lord Malquist’s house, more or less implausibly engaged: there was a man selling the
Evening Standard,
a man selling clockwork spiders, a man sweeping the road, and a fourth man doing nothing at all.

At the bottom of the steps leading up to the door Moon looked back at them and saw that the roadsweeper had swept his way along to cut off any retreat Moon might have had in mind. The fourth man, who had a bowler hat and a moustache, sidled up.

‘Lord Malquist?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘No.’

‘I thought not. Is he inside?’

‘I don’t know,’ Moon said.

The roadsweeper said to the man in the hat, ‘Don’t jump the gun.’

The man in the hat looked startled but said nothing.

The roadsweeper said to the newspaper seller, ‘What did I tell you, sarge? Too many cooks.’

The newspaper seller replied: ‘You got me wrong, mate, I’m just a poor bloke makin’ a few coppers wiv the old pypers.’

‘Oh, right,’ said the roadsweeper. ‘Sorry, mate.’

The man with the clockwork spiders came up and said to the newspaper seller, ‘What’s up, sarge?’

The newspaper seller took no notice.

The man in the hat stared at them all.

Moon said, ‘Are you policemen?’

The newspaper seller laughed bronchially and spat.

‘Hee-hee-hee, didja hear that? Me, five years in the Ville, ten years on the Moor, and ‘e thinks I’m a rozzer!’

‘Hee-hee-hee,’ laughed the roadsweeper.

‘Hee-hee-hee,’ laughed the man with the spiders. ‘What a most comical idea!’

The man in the hat walked backwards a few paces and hurried away.

Moon rang the bell. The front door opened and Birdboot in his livery looked down on them all.

‘Right, clear off,’ he commanded. ‘His lordship will not have the dregs of society hanging about his gate like a lot of beggars.’ He paused and gazed searchingly at the newspaper seller. ‘And that goes for you too, Sergeant Harris.’

Moon said to Birdboot, ‘Good morning, I’ve come to see Lord Malquist, by appointment.’

‘Very good, sir, would you care to come in?’

He let Moon into the house and closed the door.

‘His lordship is not in but is expected back. May I take your coat?’

Moon allowed his overcoat to be lifted off his shoulders. The bomb thumped against the hatstand as Birdboot hung the coat up.

‘Would you like to wait in the library, sir?’

Birdboot opened the door and closed it behind Moon. A man who had been asleep in one of the leather armchairs started up and got to his feet holding a briefcase which he had been hugging to his stomach.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ he said. ‘I must have dropped off – ah,
I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you before…’

‘Moon,’ said Moon. ‘How do you do?’

‘Good morning, my lord. Fitch, secretary to Sir Mortimer.’

He was a small frail man with wisps of grey hair streaking his scalp. He shook hands with Moon.

‘I’ll come to the point at once, my lord-the situation is grave. The finance company have cast certain doubts on our securities and want to withdraw their investment. I need hardly tell you where this would leave the estate. Sir Mortimer and I came over at once but I’m afraid he sends his apologies as he had a dinner engagement.

‘Breakfast,’ corrected Moon mildly.

‘Last night, my lord – I’ve been here all night.’

‘Oh, I see. Sorry. Incidentally, I don’t—’

‘The fact is my lord, the money simply doesn’t exist. I have the papers with me if you would care to see them. Sir Mortimer wishes me to say that his warnings have been frequent and ignored and that he would never have sanctioned your withdrawals had you consulted—’

‘Well, it’s nothing to do with me,’ said Moon.

‘My lord—’

‘Moon,’ said Moon. ‘My name is Moon.’

Fitch stared at him.

‘I was under the impression that you were Lord Malquist.’

‘Oh,’ said Moon. ‘Were you? I thought you were under the impression I was Lord Moon.’

‘If you permit me to say so, my lord, it was remiss of you to let me speak confidentially when you must have realised that I had mistaken you-an honest mistake-you for—’

‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ Moon said. His stupidity seemed barely explicable. ‘As I say, I mistook the emphasis of your error – I thought you thought I was a lord, not
the
lord, so to speak, and it didn’t seem important enough to—’ He realised he was gabbling.

This is absurd. What am I doing here with a pocketful of tick-tick-tick-tick-tick (and how many ticks to a bang?) – I should be – where?

Fitch sat down. Moon decided to leave. He needed a remark to get him to the door but he couldn’t think of one, and stood uncertainly against the bookcase like a stranded actor denied the release of an exit because it would be purely arbitrary. He set off round the room (casually trailing an index finger along the wall to dispel the feeling of acting out a move) and (having failed to dispel it) stopped by the desk with a sudden show of interest faked for the benefit of the audience. After a few seconds he realised he was reading a list of names handwritten on a loose sheet of paper. He read:

Hansom

Brougham

Boycott

Wellington

Raglan

Cardigan

Sandwich

Mac Adam??

Spooner (ism)

He saw that this was the end of a list that stretched back onto another sheet underneath. There was also a thicker wad of manuscript squared neatly with the corner of the desk, the top page numbered 43, and on the exact centre of the gilt-tooled red leather desk-top was page 44 ending in mid-sentence a few lines down.
Turning back for a moment to Act II Scene
2, he read,
there is a due concern for literal relevance and metric quality in ‘Her Privates We’ (F. Manning, Davies, 1930), though possibly with not quite the effect of C. Hare’s choice, ‘With a Bare Bodkin’ (Faber & Faber, 1946). This line – it occurs in Act III Scene 1 – has an alliterative weight but is perhaps weakened by the esoteric nature of its noun, which many people take to mean
a yokel or some kind of waistcoat. The same speech is the source of a great many ambiguities, as when we find ‘Mortal Coils’ (A. Huxl

That the page ended in mid-word disturbed Moon to the point where he caught himself looking round for a pen to complete it. Huxl made him nervous, it stopped time.
Marie-celestial Huxl,
he thought, and then it occurred to him that Lord Malquist must have reached this point in his book when he had arrived for tea that day; yesterday. The recognition of time so compressed sent a shock-wave through him.

Fitch was sitting broken-necked with his eyes closed and his mouth open. Moon nodded at him for security and walked quickly into the hall, closing the library door. He lifted his coat off the hat-stand and opened the front door. A police car was just drawing up.

Moon stood on the doorstep feeling quite calm. A uniformed police inspector got out from the back of the car and held the door open. (The roadsweeper swept with ostentatious diligence, the newspaper seller watched out of the corner of his eye, and the hawker of clockwork spiders saluted.) A woman neither old nor young came carefully out of the car, barefoot, carrying a single shoe.