I was fed up. It was too early in the morning to tolerate unashamed con-men like him. ‘If you don’t let her go, I’ll smash you in the teeth.’
He looked at me, as if to start a fight, then released her. She went to the counter with the little order pad swinging at her arse. ‘The trouble with you,’ he said, ‘is that you don’t understand the courtship ritual.’
‘Neither does she,’ I told him.
He took the top off the sauce bottle and swigged a mouthful, and a few driblets at his beard gave him the look of a vampire at dawn. ‘I’ve been through the subtlety stage and, on balance, I get a few more successes by the direct approach. In war the indirect approach is best, but love is the opposite of war. Have you ever read the I Ching? Mao swore by it. He wouldn’t have done the Long March if it hadn’t been for the I Ching. But in matters of love, or lust, women get just as fed up with subtlety as men. A straight yes or no saves time. They’re too busy these days, most of ’em going out to work and keeping men just to show they’re more equal than we are. Lovely. So long as you say you love ’em you can just get straight in.’
I realised how much I’d been cut off in my ten years at Upper Mayhem. It was like listening to myself in the old days. I’d learned though, but Delphick hadn’t, and I taxed him with it while waiting for our grub.
‘I could learn if I liked,’ he claimed. ‘It’s not beyond me. But if I learned too much I might get no more inspiration — as a poet, per se, see? You’ve got to be careful, because poets don’t get pensions. If they did, it might be different. Some of the eighty-year-old versifiers might well want to pack it in, but they can’t.’
‘I thought poets got good money, these days.’
He looked like a poxed-up old pirate. ‘They earn a pittance now and again. There’s all kinds of spin-offs, like grants, and talks, and performances, and editing, or anthologising when you use all your mates’ poems and expect them to pay you back in kind for years to come. Then you might do an odd review and cut your enemies to bits; or you can waffle on on the BBC about a new working-class poet you’ve just discovered but who’s blind, eighty, and lives alone on a wet hillside in Cumberland with his dog — but whose poems you’ve written yourself. It’s not easy, but you can pick up a bob or two. For itinerants there used to be workhouses, now there’s local arts groups if you want to go on tour. All you’ve got to do is write letters, and plan it well. I can write forty letters a day when I’m in full spate.’
‘That sounds like work.’
‘Well, it’s better than filling in holes on the motorway. I never let work become a burden, though.’
The waitress put three plates of breakfast and three pots of coffee on our table. Delphick locked onto her wrist again, but she snapped it free and stood out of reach. ‘If you do that once more, you mangy fucking tomcat, I’ll pour a pot of boiling water over you. I will. I promise.’
‘That’s the stuff, miss.’
I took a plate of breakfast to Dismal. ‘Wake up,’ I said, opening the car door. His eyes widened, and a long purple tongue slid over an egg and drew it in. He paused, being a dog of good manners, and pressed his Button B nose against the back of my hand. I patted him a time or two, then left him finding his way around a piece of fried bread. I got back inside to see Delphick three-quarters through the second plate of breakfast — mine. ‘Hey, you bastard!’ I pulled it away. ‘Keep off my grub.’
He yanked it back without looking up. ‘I thought you’d gone outside to eat yours. Anyway, you can afford to buy two.’
I prayed for boots big enough to make an impression. ‘I don’t own that Roll-Royce. I’m only the chauffeur.’
A lorry driver sat at the end of the room. ‘Next time I see his contraption on the road I’m going to drive all twenty-four wheels over it. He’s a right pest, he is.’
Delphick kept his head down and wiped up fat with a folded piece of bread. I went to order another breakfast while my coffee got cool. ‘If that poet comes in here again,’ the waitress told me, her dazzling green eyes looking directly into mine, so that I saw in even more sensual detail the delights of her undressed presence, ‘I’m going to put rat poison in his grub, even though I swing for it. He don’t respect anybody. And I like to be respected.’
‘Why don’t you put it in now?’ My hand was at her waist, and she didn’t push it away. ‘You don’t swing for murder anymore. The most you’ll get is eighteen months, for aggravating circumstances. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?’
She smiled. ‘I’ll have to think about it, won’t I?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ettie.’
‘I like that.’
‘I’d have cut my throat if you didn’t.’
‘You are sarky, aren’t you?’
‘Sometimes. What’s your name?’
‘Michael. Do you want a drive in a Rolls-Royce to London?’
‘Not if it isn’t yours.’
‘It’ll be a lovely smooth ride.’
‘I’ll have to think about it.’
Maybe she thought a lot when she wasn’t dishing up grub — which was most of the time. Her thoughts had to be short, though, which was the best kind to have, because they didn’t take up much precious time. Neither did they keep her from action, I assumed. She was the sort of girl I liked, and couldn’t have been more than twenty-three.
As a breakfast I could only compare it with the one from Bridgitte the morning I got out of prison. Perhaps because I had taken her part against Delphick, Ettie piled on bacon, two more eggs, beans, tomatoes, four slices of fried bread and half a tin of mushrooms. She either bribed the cook or she was having an affair with him. If she was, she wouldn’t be for much longer if I had anything to do with it.
Delphick’s eyes bulged with envy at the sight of my plate. ‘Did you put grease on her nipples?’
I pulled him up by his coat and held my fist the requisite few inches from the bridge of his nose. It stayed there for ten full seconds. He didn’t struggle or say anything, but turned whiter with each tick of the clock. I pushed him away, and he barely righted himself when the chair fell. ‘Get that panda out of my car before I set the dog on it.’
He went, such pain and hurt pride on his face that only now did I think he was real. I didn’t like him, because he was spoiling the day by making me feel sorry for him, and now making me feel guilty at an over-hasty reaction. But he’d insulted a woman, and I hated that, though I suppose I should have been cool and taken it like a man.
I sat down to eat, my appetite not entirely spoiled. In fact it returned, the more I put back. I hadn’t realised how famished I was. I drained the coffee pot, then ordered another, and two Danish-style pastries. ‘You’re hungry,’ Ettie said admiringly.
‘I can’t help it. It’s you that’s doing it. The more I look at you, the more I want to eat. And you know what that means?’
She blushed, the little trollop.
‘I’m six foot two and weigh a hundred and sixty pounds, but if I lived with you, and you kept on feeding me like this, I’d weigh as much as Ten Ton Tommy. They’d have to lift me on and off with a block-and-tackle, but I don’t think you’d be disappointed. I shouldn’t talk like this, I know, but I’m only having a bit of a joke, though I was quite serious when I said you’re the best-looking and most vivacious woman I’ve seen for a long time. You really are. I respect you enormously. I’m often up this way, so I’ll stop more often on the road and say hello, if that’s all right with you.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Only don’t bring that fucking deadbeat ponce with the panda-wagon. I can’t stand him. He came here once before and we couldn’t get rid of him. The man who brought him suddenly took against him and wouldn’t give him a lift away from the place. So he fell asleep on the floor. We didn’t know what to do. He snored like a hacksaw. Then he woke up and started swearing. We couldn’t throw him out because it was snowing. He said he’d phone up the television news if we did. I told him to crawl across the dual carriageway and fuck off to Scotland, but he wouldn’t budge. In the end the manager gave a van driver five quid to dump him in Cambridge. But you’re different. Do you want any more to eat?’