And then he lets fly with a very big aaah-choo! The cymbals clash a final time. There is a flash and a puff of smoke.
And there he is, gone.
Vanished.
24
Aaah-choo!
Bless you.
T he riotous applause and cheering died away. The footlights dimmed, the hall’s lights glowed again. On cue came the waiters, bearing trays of sweetmeats. Cheesy things and chocolates. Cognac and cheroots. Strawberries in crack and schooners of absinthe and mescal.
The mariachi band struck up once more and folk jigged and wriggled, but few made the effort to climb to their feet and dance. They were all bloated and not a little stoned.
‘Well, that was a load of old toot,’ said Norman.
‘Come off it,’ I said. ‘It was brilliant.’
‘So what did it all mean, then?’
I made expansive gestures.
‘You haven’t the foggiest,’ said Norman. ‘I did like the donkey, though.’
‘Well, I’m going to say thanks a lot to Professor Merlin. I wonder where he went.’
‘Gone,’ said Norman. ‘Off’d it. A big aaah-choo and goodbye to everyone.’
‘What’s the time?’ I asked.
Norman tugged a fob watch from his pocket. It had more than the hint of Meccano about it. ‘A quarter to twelve,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t time just fly when you’re enjoying yourself?’
‘OK.’ I stood up and squared my shoulders and then I did that breathing in deeply through the nose and out again through the mouth thing that people do before they take on something big.
A bungee jump, perhaps. Or a leap through a ring of fire on a motorbike.
Or even a daring dive from the top of a waterfall. Or a sabre charge on horseback into the mouths of the Russian guns at Sebastopol.
Or— ‘What are you doing?’ asked Norman.
‘Preparing myself for the big one.’
‘I’ve no wish to hear about your bowel movements.’
I showed Norman my fist again and mimed repeated violent blows. ‘Biff biff biff,’ I said. ‘And Norman’s out for the count.’
Norman rolled his eyes and got to his feet. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I know what we have to do. Find the woman with the green lipstick. If she has any green lipstick left. She’s probably smeared it all off, pushing porcupine’s peckers down her gob.’
‘I never knew there were porcupine’s peckers.’
‘Yeah, well, there were only a few left. I had most of them at lunchtime.’
‘Come on,’ I said to Norman. ‘Crank up your peacock suit and let’s get this done. I’ll feel a lot better about ringing in the New Year once we’ve grabbed this woman, tied her up and bunged her in the cellar.’
‘Fair enough.’ Norman tinkered with his remote control. ‘This lad’s on the blink,’ he said, shaking it about. ‘I think some of the circuits have come unstuck.’ He gave the delicate piece of equipment several hearty thumps. ‘That’s got it,’ he said.
‘Right then.’ I explained to Norman the cunning strategy that I felt we should employ. It was simple, but it would prove effective. All we had to do, I told him, was to shuffle nonchalandy amongst the lolling guests in a manner that would arouse no hint of suspicion, and bid each of the womenfolk a casual how-d’you-do whilst having a furtive peer at their lipstick. Then whichever one of us found her would simply shout across to the other: ‘Here’s the murdering bitch,’ and together we’d make the citizen’s arrest.
Whatever could go wrong with a strategy like that?
Nothing.
Also, I felt that doing it this way would give me the opportunity to chat up some of the top notch totty and perhaps see myself all right for a bunk-up to bring in the New Year.
It was only fair. It was my party.
‘Go on,’ I said to Norman. ‘Off you go.’
Norman went off, going how-d’you-do, and I went off, doing likewise.
‘How-d’you-do,’ I went, ‘enjoying the party?
‘Hope everything’s OK.
‘Please don’t stub your cigar butts on the floor. Kindly use the human ashtrays provided.
‘A little more Charlie with your strawberries, your Royal Highness?’
And so on and so forth and suchlike.
I thought we were doing rather well, actually. We were quartering the hall, moving in almost orchestrated shufffing zig-zag parallels not altogether unlike a combination of Rommell’s now legendary pincer movement and the ever-popular ‘Hokey Cokey’.
I rather hoped we’d be doing that later. Along with ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ and the ‘Birdy Song’. They really make the party go with a whizz in my opinion.
I suppose I must have how-d’you-do’d my way through at least fifty women before I chanced to glance across to see how Norman was doing. He appeared to be doing rather well, by all accounts. For where all my how-d’you-dos had ended with me shuffling on alone, Norman’s hadn’t. It seemed that all the women Norman had howd’you-do’d to were now following him.
They trailed along behind in a giggling all-girl conga line.
I sighed and shook my head and did some more how-d’you-dos. I was getting rather fed up with how-d’you-dos, as it happened. So
I thought I’d switch to hi-hello-theres, just to liven things up.
Mind you, I don’t know why I even bothered with any pleasantries at all. None of the well-heeled, well-fed, well-sloshed, well-stoned women even showed the faintest interest in me.
I was well pissed off, I can tell you.
I mean to say, this was my party and they were scoffing my grub and getting pissed on my booze and spacing themselves out on my dope. The least that one of these stuck-up tarts could have done was to offer me a blow-job.
But did any of them?
Did they bugger!
I thought I’d slip into Irish mode. Women always go for Irish blokes. It’s in their charm and the melody of their language. Or it’s the hint of danger about them. Or it’s something else about them. But I reckon it’s the accent.
Well, I thought it was worth a try.
‘Top of the morning to you,’ I said to Ma’ll-yell-if-you-thrust-it-up.[10]
She looked strangely unimpressed.
But her boyfriend looked rather upset.
‘Bugger off, you bog-trotting loon,’ was what he had to say.
I leaned low in his direction. I recognized him immediately. He was that honourable literary chap, Old-Hairy-fat-prick.[11]
‘Off about your business,’ he drawled. ‘Or I’ll know the reason why.’
I stared the fellow eye to eye and then I head-butted him straight in the face. Well, it had been a long and trying day.
Old Hairy fell back in a crumpled heap and I smiled over to Ma’llyell. ‘Fainted,’ I said. ‘Too much brown ale. You know what he’s like.’
I shuffled off some more.
And then, do you know what, out of the blue it just hit me. I suddenly paused and thought, What am I doing here? I mean, what am I doing here? (Not what am I doing here?)
I thought, bloody Hell, I know what I’m doing here.
I’m shuffling!
Shuffling. I hadn’t shuffled for years. But here I was doing it now. I was shuffling about amongst all these rich folk. These really really famous folk. A complete stranger. Someone who didn’t belong here at all.
I was a shuffler, me. Always had been, always would be. All the wealth I’d been left by the Doveston couldn’t change what was really inside. I was just a shuffler. I was shuffling in the way that long ago the Doveston had shuffled. The way that the Principal Boy in the play had shuffled. It was the very same shuffle.