Blaskin motored in with Mabel for the celebration, and Clegg collected Frances and Sophie, who took the train to Cambridge. What they talked about on the way I did not want to know about.
I shopped for the best brandy, wine of a good year, Finlandia vodka, and Havana cigars. Clegg and I arranged a relatively cordon bleu repast of vegetable soup (puréed); fillets of smoked mackerel with anchovies, cucumber and hard boiled eggs as garnish; then a main course of roast lamb and assorted vegetables; ending with fruit salad for dessert, and sundry French cheeses.
Queenly Mabel wore a long navy blue skirt, and a blouse of vertical blue and white stripes ending at a little white collar at the throat with its scrap of purple tie. Her severe aspect led me to hope she wouldn’t torment Blaskin too much during the meal, as she walked downstairs after changing into something which now made her look halfway between a headmistress and a Victorian prison wardress, which I felt sure was how Blaskin wanted her to appear. He sported his wine-dark waistcoat and a jaunty cravat.
I was never any good at placing people around a table, and we ended up with Blaskin facing Mabel, while I was opposite Frances who could therefore keep Gilbert diagonally in view, with Sophie and Clegg to look at, when he wasn’t getting up to bring in plates and platters.
“Wish me luck, Michael,” Blaskin said, swilling back a shot of ice cold vodka straight from the freezer, and forking up a piece of smoked fish. “After finishing the Moggerhanger novel for you I’ll write my autobiography.”
I scented malice in his task. “If you deal with my mother in it she’ll scratch your eyes out.”
He was too easygoing at the moment to be offended. “On that score both of you are safe. It’ll only be about me. But autobiography is such a long word I thought fifteen letters was a little too much for you to take in.”
“Thirteen,” I said.
He soured at Sophie laughing at my riposte, which I regretted making in case he was tempted into something worse. Frances closed her eyes at the way things might go — and they undoubtedly would, I knew — and showed further disapproval at him saying: “When an author’s stuck for a book the first people to go to the wall are his family.”
I ignored his truism, and lifted my glass to drink to the reconstruction of the house. “When I’ve finished the Moggerhanger saga I’ll put the typescript in a briefcase and bring it to your flat.”
He hooked a thumb in the armhole of his waistcoat. “Never put it in one of those. Too many masterpieces have been lost, stolen, or carelessly forgotten. A nondescript plastic bag is best, even a cardboard box if you travel up by car.”
Frances emerged from her trance of boredom. “What if you have a prang, and it catches fire?”
“In that case Michael would do well to go up in the conflagration as well, and get sent to the devil for such lack of foresight. I would only hope I’m not in Hell to meet him.” His domed forehead angled back for a laugh. “My publisher said my books weren’t selling so well these days. He said I needed a juicy scandal to make people curious about my work when the story was splashed over the tabloids. Thinking to do something about it, I picked up a couple of prostitutes in Shepherds Market and paraded with them drunk and laughing on my arms. Nobody looked at us. A policeman leaned out of his patrol car on Curzon Street and greeted me heartily: ‘Evening, Mr Blaskin. Written any good books lately?’ They shot on their way without waiting for a reply. So the story of Moggerhanger’s doings which you’re cobbling together should bring me back into the limelight.”
“I’m enjoying writing it,” I said. “I’ve always fancied myself as a writer, though I don’t suppose you’d like having one for a son. But what can I do when my money runs out?”
Frances confirmed by her looks that she disliked Blaskin. She always had, maybe sensing in him a direction my life might finally take. I had put her right on that fear several times, and tried to make sure she didn’t often meet him, though on doing so she coolly endured the experience for my sake.
“I’ll allow you to write a Sidney Blood for me now and again,” he said, hanging onto the tail of my thought, “which should help you along. Between one title and the next you can always do some typing for me.”
Before I could suggest whose fundament he could crawl into, Clegg brought the leg of lamb to the table, and to stop further disturbing talk from Blaskin I asked him to carve.
“We would rather you did it, Michael,” Mabel said. “The last time he made the attempt he cut his hand terribly.”
“I did,” Blaskin said. “She’d been sharpening the knife and greasing the handle all day, and her twisted smile at my life’s blood draining into the platter terrified me so much I thought my demise was close.”
Being away from the decor of Dumbell Mansions encouraged her not to be put down. “How can I forget? You said: ‘Forgive me, darling, for being so melodramatic, but I think I’m dying.’”
“It’s true, but my alarm lasted only a moment, because I thought: ‘If I’m dead, what will time mean to me then? You can’t take the love of your life with you.’” He looked too lasciviously at Sophie for my liking, though she seemed to be enjoying it. “Mabel nearly had an orgasm while staunching the blood and binding me up. The meat was delicious, though.”
Sophie came out of her wine haze. “Father, I love you, but you do go on a bit much.”
A muted ‘here-here’ from Frances brought a nod of agreement from me.
He pretended to weep, but Mabel was not discouraged. “He’s old fashioned in all his ways,” she said to us. “I’m still trying to get him to use a word processor, but he won’t countenance one. It would save him so much work.”
He filled his glass to the brim with vodka. “A writer at the Pencil Club the other day gave me a proselytising tirade on how practical they could be, but I replied that the road to Hell was paved with good inventions. I’ve done scores of books on my steam Remington, I told him, so why change?” He glanced at Mabel. “But how wonderful it would be, to live with a woman young enough to look on me as an anachronistic, sensitive, knowledgeable and endlessly fascinating character. Not knowing me, she wouldn’t have ten years of resentment to throw in my face, and I would be dead before I got to know her. Then she wouldn’t be too old to marry again, which would be a most amicable and civilised end of the affair. Still, nothing can be perfect in this life, certainly not with my beautiful but eternally icy Mabel.”
“Has it never occurred to you, Gilbert, that I’m not icy at all? I’m not even cold. I know myself to be the warmest blooded and most complicated of women, far more so than any you can have known.”
He crushed out his cigar. “That’s why we’re still together. Even though I can read your mind better than any of my books I never know what you’re going to say next. However, I’m certainly aware that you’re in no way icy when you’re boiling with vindictive rage, as you are now.”
He was getting out of control, and so would she be. I didn’t like it, but I was the host. In any case I was used to his tantrums, and was prepared to let the wrath wash over me without effect.
Knowing him about to go on, Frances could take no more and said, as if to some poor broken down superannuated malingerer in her surgery: “If you don’t grow up, Gilbert, and soon,” she fingered her little watch and looked straight at him, “and live a more healthy existence, and stop being self-indulgent and boorish, you’ll lose your ability to write anything worthwhile, and your will to live will go. You have to become more sedate in your elderliness, more philosophical and calm. Your work will then become much better, even though the books might not sell as well. I’m telling you, as a doctor, that your puerile and unhealthy lifestyle has to change, and if it doesn’t I for one won’t want to see you again.”