Mood Indigo (2 page)

The room, approximately twelve feet by fifteen, had two wide bay windows overlooking Armstrong Avenue. Large panes of glass kept the sounds of the avenue from the room, but let in the breath of springtime when it appeared outside. A limed oak table filled one corner of the room. There were wall seats at right angles to each other on two sides of it, and matching chairs with blue morocco upholstery on the other two sides. There were two other long low cupboards in the room – one fitted up as a record-player and record container with all the latest gadgets, and the other, identical with the first, containing catapults, cutlery, plates, glasses and other implements used by civilized society for eating.

Colin selected a light blue tablecloth to match the carpet. He decorated the centre of the table with a pharmaceutical jar in which a pair of embryonic chickens seemed to be dancing Nijinsky's choreography for
The Spectre of the Rose
. Around it he arranged some branches of bootlace mimosa – the gardener who worked for some friends of his had cultivated this by grafting strips of those black liquorice ribbons sold by haberdashers when school is over
onto ordinary bobbled mimosa. Then for himself and his guest he took some white china plates with filigree designs in gold and stainless steel knives and forks with perforated handles inside each of which a stuffed ladybird, floating between two layers of perspex, brought good luck every time they were used. He added crystal goblets and serviettes folded into bishops' mitres; this took him quite a time. He had hardly finished all this when the bell sprang off the wall to let him know that Chick had arrived.

Colin smoothed out an imaginary crease in the tablecloth and went to open the door.

‘How are you?' asked Chick.

‘How are
you
?' replied Colin. ‘Take off your mac and come and see what Nicholas has made for us.'

‘Is he your new cook?'

‘Yes,' said Colin. ‘I swapped him at the pawnbroker's for a couple of pounds of Algerian coffee and the old one.'

‘And is he any good?' asked Chick.

‘He seems to know what he's doing. He swears by ffroydde.'

‘What have sex and dreams got to do with cooking?' asked Chick, horrified. His lush black moustache began to droop at a tragic angle.

‘No, you idiot, I'm talking about Saint Clement, not Monsignor Sigmund!'

‘Oh, sorry!' said Chick. ‘But you know I never read anything except Jean Pulse Heartre.'

He followed Colin into the tiled corridor, stroked the mice and casually scooped up a handful of sundrops to pop into his lighter.

‘Nicholas,' said Colin as he went in, ‘this is my friend Chick.'

‘How do you do, sir?' said Nicholas.

‘How do you do, Nicholas?' replied Chick. ‘Haven't you got a niece called Alyssum?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Nicholas. ‘And a very pretty girl too, if I may be allowed to say so.'

‘She looks very much like you,' said Chick. ‘Although there are one or two differences around the bust …'

‘I'm fairly broad, sir,' said Nicholas, ‘but she is better developed in a perpendicular direction, if Mr Chick will permit the precision.'

‘Well,' said Colin, ‘it's almost a family reunion. You never told me you had a niece, Nicholas.'

‘Ah! My sister went wrong, sir,' said Nicholas. ‘She took up philosophy. It isn't the kind of thing we like to talk about outside the family …'

‘Hm …' said Colin, ‘I suppose you're right. At any rate, I see what you mean. Now, let's have a look at your Stilettoed Eel …'

‘It would be fatal to open the cooker now,' warned Nicholas. ‘By introducing air with a less rich water content than that already in the oven, desiccation would almost certainly take place.'

‘I'd rather,' said Chick, ‘have the pleasure of seeing it for the first time on the table.'

‘Mr Chick's patience meets with my entire approval, sir,' said Nicholas. ‘May I be allowed to beg Mr Colin's leave, sir, to continue with my good work?'

‘Do carry on, please, Nicholas!'

Nicholas went back to the job he was doing when they had interrupted him. He was taking fillets of sole in truffled aspic out of their moulds. Their ultimate fate was to garnish the seafood hors d'oeuvres.

‘Would you like a drink first?' asked Colin. ‘I've finished my clavicocktail and we could try it out.'

‘Does it really work?' asked Chick. ‘Or do you have to wind it up with a harpsicorkscrew first?'

‘Of course it works. I had a hard job getting it right, but the finished result is beyond my wildest dreams. When I played the “Black and Tan Fantasy” I got a really crazy concoction.'

‘How does it work?' asked Chick.

‘For each note,' said Colin, ‘there's a corresponding drink – either a wine, spirit, liqueur or fruit juice. The loud pedal puts in egg flip and the soft pedal adds ice. For soda you play a cadenza in F sharp. The quantities depend on how long a note is held – you get the sixteenth of a measure for a hemidemisemiquaver; a whole measure for a black note; and four measures for a semibreve. When you play a slow tune, then tone comes into control too to prevent the amounts growing too large and the drink getting too big for a cocktail – but the alcoholic content remains unchanged. And, depending on the length of the tune, you can, if you like, vary the measures used, reducing them, say, to a hundredth in order to get a drink taking advantage of all the harmonics by means of an adjustment on the side.'

‘Sounds a bit complicated,' said Chick.

‘The whole thing is controlled by electrical contacts and relays. I won't go into all the technicalities because you know all about them anyway. And, anyway, the keyboard itself can work independently.'

‘It's wonderful!' said Chick.

‘Only one thing still worries me,' said Colin, ‘and that's the loud pedal and the egg flip. I had to put in a special
gear system because if you play something too hot, lumps of omelette fall into the glass, and they're rather hard to swallow. I've still got a few modifications to make there. But it's all right if you're careful. And if you feel like a dash of fresh cream, you add a chord in G major.'

‘I'm going to try an improvisation on “Loveless Love”,' said Chick. ‘That should be fantastic.'

‘It's still in the junk room that I use as my workshop,' said Colin, ‘because the guard plates aren't screwed down yet. Come in there with me. I'll set it for two cocktails of about seventy-five milligallons each to start with.'

Chick sat at the instrument. When he'd reached the end of the tune a section of the front panel came down with a sharp click and a row of glasses appeared. Two of them were brimming with an appetizing mixture.

‘You scared me,' said Colin. ‘You played a wrong note once. Luckily it was only in the harmonization.'

‘You don't mean to say that that comes into it too?' said Chick.

‘Not always,' said Colin. ‘That would make it too elaborate. So we just give it a few passing acknowledgements. Now drink up – and we'll go and eat.'

‘This Stilettoed Eel is terrific,' said Chick. ‘Where did you get the idea from?'

‘Nicholas had it,' said Colin. ‘There's an eel – or there
was
an eel, rather – that used to go into his wash-basin every day through the cold-water tap.'

‘What a funny thing to do,' said Chick. ‘Why did it do that?'

‘It used to pop its head out and empty the toothpaste by squeezing the tube with its teeth. Nicholas only uses that American brand with the pineapple flavour, and I don't think it could resist the temptation.'

‘How did he catch it?' asked Chick.

‘One day he put a whole pineapple there instead of the toothpaste. When it was only the tube it would suck out the toothpaste, swallow it, and then pop its head straight back. But with the pineapple it wouldn't work. The harder it pulled, the farther its teeth sunk in. Nicholas …'

Colin held back the rest of his sentence.

‘Nicholas what?' said Chick.

‘I'm scared to tell you the rest. It might take away your appetite.'

‘Carry on,' said Chick, ‘my plate's almost empty, anyway.'

‘Well, Nicholas came in at that very moment and sliced off its head with a razor blade. Then he swiftly turned on the tap and out came the rest.'

‘Is that all?' said Chick. ‘Give me some more then! I hope it left a large family in the tank.'

‘Nicholas has put out a tube of raspberry-flavoured toothpaste to see …' said Colin. ‘But tell me more about this Alyssum you were talking to him about …'

‘I can just see her now,' said Chick. ‘I met her at one of Jean Pulse's lectures. We were both lying flat on our stomachs under the platform – and that's how I got to know her …'

‘What's she like?'

‘Oh, I'm no good at descriptions,' said Chick. ‘She's pretty …'

‘Ah!…' said Colin.

Nicholas came back. He was bringing in the turkey.

‘Sit down and eat with us, Nicholas,' said Colin. ‘After all, as Chick was saying, you're almost one of the family.'

‘I must see to the mice first, if Mr Colin has no objections, sir,' said Nicholas. ‘But I'll be back in a moment. I've already carved the turkey … And here is the sauce …'

‘Wait till you taste it,' said Colin. ‘It's a sauce made from creamed mangoes and juniper berries piped into little pouches of plaited veal. You blow into them like bagpipes and the sauce comes out like toothpaste.'

‘Super!' said Chick.

‘You wouldn't like to give me some clues about the way in which you entered into your relationship with her? …' Colin went on.

‘Well …' said Chick, ‘I asked her if she liked Jean Pulse Heartre and she told me that she collected all his works … Then I said to her “So do I” … And every time that I said something to her, she answered “So do I”, and vice versa … Then, finally, just as an existentialist experiment, I said to her “I love you very much”. But that time she just said “Oh!” …'

‘So the experiment was a flop,' said Colin.

‘I suppose so,' said Chick. ‘But all the same she didn't go. So then I said “I'm going that way”, and she said “I'm not”. But she went on “I'm going
this
way” …'

‘Extraordinary,' nodded Colin.

‘So I said “So am I” …' said Chick. ‘And after that I went everywhere that she did …'

‘And the consequence was? …' said Colin.

‘Hmmm! …' said Chick. ‘Well, it was bedtime …'

Colin gulped hard and swallowed down a bottle of red wine before he recovered.

‘I'm going skating with her tomorrow,' said Chick. ‘It's Sunday. How about coming with us? We're going in the morning because there won't be too many people around then. I'm not all that keen,' he remarked, ‘because I'm a rotten skater, but we can always talk about Heartre.'

‘I'll be there …' promised Colin. ‘And I'll bring Nicholas … Maybe he's got some more nieces …'

Colin stepped down from the tube train and went up the escalator. He came out on the wrong side of the station, turned left and went right round it before he could get his bearings. He used his yellow silk handkerchief to find out the direction of the wind. It immediately swept all the colour out of the handkerchief and spread it over a large lumpy building which suddenly took on the appearance of the Rinkspot Skating Club.

The bump on the side nearest Colin was the indoor swimming pool. He went past that, and on the other side penetrated into the petrified organism by going through a double set of plate glass swing doors with bronze handles. When he showed his season ticket to the Commissionaire it winked at him through the two little round holes that had already been punched in it. The Commissionaire smiled back, but nevertheless gave a third brutal punch to the orange card and the ticket was blinded for life. Colin hurriedly put it back into his wallodile crocket and turned left into a corridor with a rubber floor that led to the changing cubicles. The ones at the level of the rink were all full. So
he went up the concrete stairs, bumping into some very tall people on their way down cutting extraordinary capers and trying desperately to behave naturally despite the obvious disadvantage of being perched on vertical metallic blades. A man in a white polo-necked sweater opened a cubicle for him, pocketed the tip Colin gave him for his pains but which Colin was sure he would spend on pleasure because he looked like a liar, and left Colin to rest in peace there alone, after having carelessly scribbled his initials with a piece of chalk on a little blackboard specially put there for that purpose. Colin noticed that the man did not have a man's head, but an ostrich's, and couldn't understand why he was working in the ice-rink instead of at the swimming pool.

An oval sound rose from the rink, overlaid by the music of loud-speakers scattered all around. The skaters' trampling had not yet reached the sonic booming of those hectic moments when the noise it makes can be compared to a regiment marching over cobbled roads through squelching mud. Colin looked round for Alyssum and Chick, but they did not seem to be on the ice. Nicholas was coming to join him a little later; he still had some work to do in the kitchen in preparation for lunch.

Colin undid his shoelaces and noticed that his soles had gone. He took a roll of sticky tape from his pocket, but there wasn't enough left. So he planted his shoes in a little puddle of condensation on the concrete seat and sprinkled them with concentrated fertilizer to make the leather sprout again quickly. He slipped on a pair of thick woollen socks with wide yellow and purple stripes, and put on his skating boots. His skates had blades that were divided in two at the front so that he could easily make changes of direction.