“But why did they have to send Cullen?”
“Looks real, don’t it? Showed Moggerhanger meant business. Any old fool at the wheel, and the Green Toe Gang wouldn’t bother. They must have tracked him from the Channel. A little hint, of course. There’s no flies on Lord Moggerhanger. If there was he wouldn’t be a lord, would he?”
I gave another wipe at the place where my blood itched. “This is all pukka gen?”
“I remembered it, didn’t I? I’m not stupid.”
I put an arm around his shoulders. “My dear chap, Sidney Blood looks on you with such favour that he will show you into the sanctum where he actually writes the books you like so much. If you would kindly pull the remains of breakfast from your chin, and come with me, I’ll fulfil one of your deepest wishes.”
Poor Kenilworth followed me like the vile dog he was. “You can even sit in the armchair in which I think up the juiciest plots.” I went to my desk, to sort a few sheets, and wrote a hurried paragraph. “This is the latest. I’m thinking of calling it ‘Blood Brings Home the Bacon.’ What do you think of that for a title?”
He persuaded his eyes away from playing marbles with each other. “Smashing, Sidney.”
“That’s all right, then. If as assiduous and knowing a fan as yourself likes it, then so do I. Therefore, relax, old chap, and allow me to read you a line or two, something I’ve never done for anyone, not even for Michael Cullen:
“Sidney Blood always ran upstairs when on a job, but was careful to walk down slowly. He knew danger when he saw it. Running up, you caught your enemy at a disadvantage, and walking down you could enjoy the satisfaction of having cut him up without the peril of tripping on a ragged carpet. In any case, witnesses were more likely to remember a running man than one calmly walking. Lighting a cigarette, he noticed blood on his fingernails …’ How does that strike you?”
“Smashin’. I wish I could hear it all.”
“That would take another week.” I reached into a drawer. “Let me make you a present of a signed copy.”
“You mean it? My mum will be ever so proud when I show it her. She loves your books as well. Nick’s ’em from the library, then keeps ’em on the parlour table with a Bible on top.”
I scribbled: ‘Best Wishes from Sidney Blood, to my most fervent fan Kenny Dukes.’ My brain was working feverishly, as Blood might say, on something more important. “Can you tell me when Michael Cullen left? He was coming for tea this afternoon, and if he’s away I can work on Sidney Blood instead.”
His stereoscopic arm reached for the book. “He left yesterday. Put his car on the train to Milan, didn’t he? Should be in Jugoslavia by now, unless the GTGs got him in Italy.”
A padded envelope from the waist basket was good enough to put his book in. “If an old lady recognises it on the street she might take offence, and snatch if from you to burn in her stove.”
“I’d like to see her try.” With a hideous grin he took a knuckleduster from his pocket, polished it with halitosis breath, and buffed it up on his jacket sleeve. “I’d land her a real knuckle sandwich, wouldn’t I? I like to make my day now and again.”
He didn’t know that Chelsea women would smack him to the pavement in a trice and send a spiked heel into each eye. How was it, I wondered, that a walking arsenal such as him was allowed to roam without let or hindrance, while someone like me could be sent to the lock-up for not paying income tax? “And now I must ask you to leave, because priority number one is that I get on with the novel of which you’ve just heard an immortal part. The fact is, Kenny, another chap writes Sidney Bloods, though he has no right to. He’s the bane of my life, and only does it to spite me.”
Mabel was in the living room scooping up the breakfast detritus. “Who is he?” tinkled from Kenny’s lips.
“A chap called Delphick, a performance poet who pushes a pram with a panda on top up and down between here and Yorkshire.
“Next time I see him I’ll drive him off the hard shoulder. I’ll break his fingers, then he’ll have to write with his toes. Slow him down a bit, Sidney. You can rely on me.”
“You mustn’t do that. All’s fair in love and writing.” His arm came towards me for a farewell handshake. “Not too firm, or I shan’t be able to write, either.”
He grinned. “We don’t want that, do we, Sidney?”
Closing the door, I rubbed my hands in anticipation of taking Mrs Drudge-Perkins to task, giving her a dressing down, talking to her in no uncertain terms, having it out with her with regard to our unfinished business. My head was throbbing again now that no one was here to amuse me.
The front door was stout and thick, but through it I heard Kenny Dukes call out, as if to some blameless individual making a way upstairs: “Who are you, fuckface?” to which the bark of a somewhat military response was: “No nonsense from you, or I’ll bundle you in the lift and cut the cable so that you’ll fall fifty feet to a timely death.”
The grill clashed open, and Kenny Dukes boarded the lift for the descent, so I went into the living room, to open another bottle of brandy, and ponder on what could be done for Michael Cullen. He may be a bastard as far as I was concerned but I didn’t want to see him up excrement’s creek without a paddle, as the roughs in my platoon used to say, when I was close to getting them into exactly that situation.
But first I had to settle the score with Mabel. A pleasure was all the more piquant for having been deferred, though at the same time it shouldn’t be allowed to wait too long. Her hands were rattling dishes in the sink, and on hearing me come in she turned round: “No, Gilbert, don’t. Oh please don’t. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t mean it.”
It must have been her lucky day, because the door bell rang again, long and loud, as if whoever leaned on it would continue to do so till he fell down and the undertakers had to be called. Everything was conspiring to stop me writing, but the bell, which always rang for me alone, in spite of what Donne said, had to be answered, since the period between its noise and a normal opening of the door wouldn’t allow sufficient time for me to give Mabel the drubbing I’d intended. Nevertheless, I would tell whoever it was that if it was me they wanted I no longer lived here.
“Good morning, Major Blaskin. I hope you remember me.”
“I might, but who the hell are you? Are you from the income tax headquarters? Or did a publisher send you for a manuscript I owe them?”
“Nothing like that, sir. I’m an ex-soldier, Sergeant William Straw, late Sherwood Foresters. I saw service in the War. You were good enough to hide me in your roofspace three years ago, when all the gangs in London were after my guts.” He stood in the gloom of the hall. “If you’ll excuse me saying so, Major, you look as if you’ve been in a bit of a war yourself. You’re covered in blood.”
“Am I?” I stepped back to face the mirror. “So I am. Just a little tiff with my girlfriend.”
“I hope you gave her a friendly one back, sir.”
He was smart, lean, short-haired and erect, a six footer who had invited himself, I now recalled, to hide in the rafters above the flat, until I discovered him one evening in the kitchen consuming my food supplies like Brunel’s soil-cutting machine boring a tunnel under the Thames, smoking one of my best cigars like a Sheffield chimney, and quaffing my wine like water, which it certainly wasn’t.
He smiled. “Is that ravenous dog Dismal still inside? I wouldn’t like him to shred my turn ups. It’s my only pair of good trousers at the moment.”
“What is it you want?”