“Well you’re not that tired out then.”
“No you got a point there honey.”
“It’s you who has the point. And it’s such a nice big handsome one. And I want you to put it in me.”
“Sure honey, sure.”
“I really mean that, Sigmund.”
“Sure I know you do honey. Don’t get upset. It was only that I think we should wait for a real special moment that’s all.”
“Haven’t you been screaming at me. And yelling that you want satisfaction and a normal sex life. Well that’s what I’m fucking well going to give you, when you fuck me tonight.”
“Hey christ, the language honey. Watch it. What’s got into you.”
“Nothing. But tonight, you are.”
O.K.
I’m convinced
O.K.
7
It was one minute past Tuesday. Big Ben booming midnight echoing over Belgravia. A rising easterly wind and rain slamming at the windows. When Schultz felt he was dying in an explosion. Pricilla on her back wide eyed, thought Schultz screaming so loud was having a combined heart attack, convulsion and brainstorm. When all he was having was an orgasm.
Pricilla lay like some embalmed queen not particularly of Sheba but not far from there either. Schultz wondering when the Oriental Venereal Plague and its vesicular chancres would erupt. As it did in a dream pushing one’s own wheelbarrow full of one’s gargantuanly swollen testicles towards Pricilla’s two ton mother waiting in an abattoir with a sledgehammer upraised. But on the softened linen sheets finally waking feeling unexpectedly good. Coffee brought by Pricilla with the newspaper. Bedroom bathed in sunshine. Black eye fading fast on one’s face.
“Darling you had a nightmare. You were shouting don’t break them.”
“O yeah someone was carrying a big box of eggs.”
That mid morning the Ambassador’s Secretary telephoned. Asking if Mr. Schultz and his good friend the dark haired lady could come for a small black tie festivity the following night.
“Who is that foreign voice Sigmund.”
“O just His Excellency across the street, just likes to know that the house isn’t being robbed.”
“I heard you say no that you couldn’t.”
“Hey what is it baby you got to hang your head over the bannister listening with your nose in my business.”
“I want to know why you had to say no you couldn’t that’s all.”
“Because I’m fucking too busy that’s why. He wanted me to go to dinner.”
“O that would be nice.”
Schultz on his way out the hall to Sperm Productions phoned the Ambassador to accept. And sunshine beaming down warming one’s back, detouring along by the big black numerals on the grey stone houses shaping the sweeping curve of the crescent. To pop into the church at Wilton Place. Pray to Almighty god. That I do not have the venereal plague. With handfuls of my pubic hair falling out my trouser leg.
Schultz doubling back around the other side of the crescent and its stately town houses. Turning up Grosvenor Crescent past the offices of the Red Cross whose tireless members rush aid all over the world to the diseased and distressed. Might even have a cure for me. If only I had the nerve to present myself clapped up inside their polished doors.
Up in the elms and cotton ball trees of Green Park, birds chirping merrily. Schultz cutting through the narrow brick alley and dark tunnel passage and turning down past this hotel and left into sunny splendors of Westminster, St. James’s. The noonday gleaming motor chariots steaming up this boulevard of gentleman’s clubs. Chaps popping in and out of hat, shoe, shirt and gun makers. The bowlers tipping, the brollys tapping. The town of London indubitably awake. And Schultz, still breathing heavily after a climb up the stairs with the lift out of action, was about to open his mail when confronted at his cubbyhole door by Rebecca.
“Sir, sorry to disturb you but the Metropolitan Police are on Lord Nectarine’s private line for you in his office.”
Schultz ashen faced rising behind his desk. Bowels loosening, guts churning. Holy fucking christ almighty, I’ve got the Oriental Venereal Plague. Jesus. This should happen to me so fucking young. After even praying to god in church. Before I even had a chance to have a hit. Pricilla’s mother is now going to be chasing me with an axe. To chop my prick off. And fry it with her sausages.
Schultz entering his Lordship’s gloomy office along the passage. His trembling hand nearly dropping the phone as he picked it up. Rebecca discreetly retreating closing the door.
“Hello.”
“Is this Mr. Sigmund Schultz.”
“Speaking.”
“This is Bow Street Police Station. We have a gentleman here sir, who says you are his guardian.”
“Who’s that.”
“His name given us is Terence F. X. Magillacurdy.”
“Yeah that’s right. What’s wrong.”
“Well he resisted arrest yesterday evening and was bound over to keep the peace which he was disturbing while being apprehended for trespass and contravening certain bylaws in Brompton Cemetery.”
On the pavement outside the Magistrate’s Court suitably situated across the street from the Royal Opera House, Schultz discovered instantly, that the mere sight of the massive mischievously grinning face of Magillacurdy frightened people in all walks of life. Including himself. As the Irish gentleman in his ripped thick blue sweater, his flame bright hair and torn green corduroy trousers, stood open armed gaily greeting the passing young ladies.
“Ah me boyo now. Sure I had one bobby by the scruff of the neck and another by the tunic. And another on the end of me boot. Trying to knock culture into them. Can you imagine. The lack of respect for a Mozart aria I was right in the middle of rendering. With every bit of me artistry fully stretched with the fiendish difficulties that that composer Wolfgang Mozart presents to the innocent singer.”
“Who’s your Agent Mr. Magillacurdy.”
“Agent. What are you talking about. And call me Patrick me boyo. I’ve scrapped me other Christian names. And I’m not to be bartered brokered or sold by any man. I’m me own Agent. And I’d be glad at this very delicate moment to negotiate with you as an advance on my ten per cent, a pint or two of stout in that pub needing patronage standing innocently there on the corner.”
Schultz elbowing a way through to the bar in the crowded lunch time pub. Jammed with flower vegetable and fruit merchants. Magillacurdy perched massively on a bar stool. As he downed four pints of draught Guinness in a row without blinking. Pausing only to devour with one bite each, six ham rolls, four scotch eggs and five sausages.
“I abandoned reading writing and arithmetic at the age of five. Took up singing acting and dancing. And now it’s me life me boyo. I’m fit for nothing else save carnal criminality. No drama school would even have me. They’d take one look at me as I stepped up to give my audition. And said to my face that if I sang anymore or danced another step they’d be compelled to summon the police. That’s nearly been the nature of my theatrical career right down to this very moment of washing this sausage down my throat.”
“What have you done in the way of stage work.”
“Done. What have I done. I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve loosened many a rafter and floor board raising the great ghosts of me mummer predecessors in any theatre or building that would stand up under the strain. And you will not hear or see the like of me again.”
“I believe you.”
“Ah with sufficient wool pulled over your eyes, you’re already hopelessly prejudiced in my favour I can see that. And we’ll drink to it.”
“Hey tell me something, Patrick.”
“Certainly what is it me boyo now that you’d want to know.”
“What are you doing sleeping in a cemetery.”