“I’ve got Dr Johnson down here,” Mick said, “but I guess that’s near enough. That’s very good. How did you know that?”
“My expensive education wasn’t a complete waste of money,” Sands replied.
Mick moved the tiny boat along the chart, sat it on Battersea Bridge and said, “Then you’ll probably get this one. Question two: in which London square will you find a statue of Mahatma Gandhi?”
“No idea,” Sands said dismissively.
“Don’t want to guess?”
“Not really.”
“It’s Tavistock Square. Hard lines.”
Sands shrugged to show it meant nothing to him. Mick thumbed through the book looking for another question and said, “It must be nice coming here of an evening, watching the ships roll in and then watching them roll away again.”
“I like it,” Sands replied.
“But it must cost a packet to keep a boat here.”
“Yes, mooring fees aren’t cheap.”
“You ought to tie your boat up in Filey or Robin Hood’s Bay, somewhere a bit more scenic.”
“Unfortunately, I happen to live and work in London.”
“What line of work are you in then?”
“Insurance,” he said.
“We have insurance in Yorkshire too,” said Mick.
“I’m in marine insurance. You need to be in London if you’re in marine insurance.”
“Yeah. Obviously. Because you see so many boats in London, don’t you?”
Sands gave a lightly exasperated sigh. In his current circumstances he was not inclined to embark on an explanation of the workings of the marine insurance industry.
“Forgive my ignorance,” Mick said. “Right, question number three: how many black cabs were there in London in 1982? It’s an old book. I assume they must have had a recount since then, but go on. Have a guess, to the nearest thousand.”
“Twelve thousand,” Sands said.
“Hey, not bad, I’ll give you that. Was that a guess? The answer’s 12,560, and they were all diesel except for seventeen of them. You’re doing well. Now tell me, how do you get two girls to go to bed with you just like that, the way you did with those two tonight? This isn’t one of the twenty questions by the way. I mean, what do you say to them? How do you get the conversation round to the subject of three-in-a-bed sex?”
“Charm has something to do with it,” Sands said. “And offering to give them drugs.”
“You give them drugs?”
“I offer them drugs. I don’t slip them a Mickey Finn.”
“Drugs,” Mick tutted. “Don’t you have any respect for your sexual partners?”
“I have as much respect for them as they have for themselves.”
“Don’t you worry about them, don’t you ever think what you might be doing to them?”
“What is this? Do you know those girls? Are you a boyfriend or brother or something?”
Mick made a gesture that said neither yes nor no. He was happy to have Sands remain uncertain.
“I mean, if you are, then what can I say except sorry.”
“Sorry’s not enough,” said Mick. “Now, question four: what is the origin of the place name Soho?”
“I know that,” Sands said. “It’s a hunting cry, like tally-ho, from the days when the area was still parkland and used for hunting.”
“That’s amazing,” Mick said. “It’s an amazing fact, and it’s even more amazing that you should know it. So, what about your wife? What would she say if she knew what you’d been up to with those two girls?”
“She’d be very glad that I’d had sex with somebody else so that I stopped bothering her.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“As a matter of feet, it is.”
“Have you tried charm and drugs on her?”
“Not recently, no. But I know what the result would be. You’re not a friend of my wife’s, for Christ’s sake, are you?”
“I’m everybody’s friend,” Mick said. “I seem to be able to establish this easy rapport with people. They tell me all sorts of things. I mean, you’re probably wondering why you’re bothering to answer these questions about your sex life. Is it because you’re scared I might kill you?”
Being killed was not one of the options Sands had so far considered. He fought against it but he couldn’t stop a shudder running through his body. Mick pretended not to notice.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think that’s the reason. I think the real answer is that you realize how good confession is for the soul.”
“I’ll remember that,” Sands said.
“OK, question five: what was the subject of John Evelyn’s Fumifugium, written in 1661?”
“I don’t know. Smog, fogs, London particulars?”
“I can only accept one answer,” Mick said.
“London fogs,” Sands said, sorry to be dealing with an idiot.
“Very good. I didn’t think you were going to get it. What were you going on about London Particulars? That’s a bookshop.”
“It’s also a name given to London fogs.”
“Get away!”
Sands looked exasperated as well as scared. Mick wondered if it was time to hit him again in order to make him more compliant, but he decided to wait a little longer, see how it went. He moved the toy boat one bridge up the river.
“Question six: the name of which London district contains six consecutive consonants, one after the other?”
Sands looked at him as though he was being ridiculous, as though there was no way any English place name could possibly contain such a configuration. Then suddenly it came to him.
“Knightsbridge,” he said triumphantly.
“Very good.”
“It’s a bit of a cheat actually,” Sands pointed out. “I mean, obviously it was once two separate words and the ‘s’ would have had an apostrophe.”
“What does it matter?” Mick said. “You got it right. You ever paid for sex?”
No longer surprised by the turns of Mick’s mind, Sands replied, “Only when I was very young and living abroad.”
“Doesn’t count then. You ever forced yourself on somebody? You know, like date-rape or whatever they call it.”
“Of course not.”
“How about when not on a date, just straightforward rape?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“OK, question seven: whose last twelve symphonies, and that’s numbers ninety-three to one hundred and four, are known as the London Symphonies?”
“That’s Haydn,” Sands said immediately.
“Very good. Haydn it is. Twelve symphonies written between 1791 and 1795. I don’t suppose you can whistle any of them.”
Sands made a brave attempt to whistle a passage from one of the symphonies.
“That’s good,” said Mick. “I’m tempted to give you a bonus mark, but no, I’ve got to be fair. You’re still doing amazingly well. You’re at Westminster Bridge already. Let’s hope you can keep it up, as the Chelsea girls said to the man in marine insurance. Right, question eight: who, in a song, didn’t want to go to Chelsea?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Sands said.
“Oh, come on, everybody knows that.”
“Not me.”
“Of course you do.”
“I’ve said I don’t.”
“Hey, don’t get stroppy, Jonathan,” said Mick, and he punched him twice, once in the face, once in the stomach. He felt they were both overdue. Sands’ stroppiness disappeared, but from then on things started to go marginally less well for him. As well as not knowing that it was Elvis Costello who didn’t want to go to Chelsea, he didn’t know that Charles II first met Nell Gwyn in the Dove Inn at Hammersmith. Equally he had no idea that Crouch End derived its name from crux, the Roman word for a cross. He made a stab at guessing the population of London at the time of the Norman conquest, but he was nowhere near the right answer, which was somewhere between fourteen and eighteen thousand.