Life Goes On (23 page)

I suppose I must explain (being a writer) that her real name was Drudge-Perkins, and that she came from a highly respected family. She had a statuesque and severe aspect, and was forty years of age. For a brief period, in her early thirties, she had been my mistress. I say mistress advisedly, because that's what it was like whenever I got her into bed. I'd first met her when I gave a talk at Camp House (Contemporary Arts, Music and Poetry) on ‘Art and the People', or was it ‘The Novelist and the Moral Crisis of the Age'? She took me to task afterwards (her phrase) on my cynicism, which I called reality, but we climbed into bed before the argument got far, she because she wanted to hear my final views on the matter (I was very subtle and diplomatic in those days, not to say devious), and me because I needed to get to the fundamental parts of her matter. And so things went from bad to better and from better to ecstatic. She was one of the best women I ever had and she wasn't averse to indicating, by her concupiscent frigidity, that I was one of the worst men for her. She was a single woman with a private income, and I rode that one till she offered to give it to me, so that I could nobly refuse, which I did. She did my typing for a while, after the demise of poor Pearl Harby, until I got tired of correcting her myriad mistakes (and her trying to alter my style and take out what she considered the dirty bits but which were tepid pictures of what really flowed through the sewers), and took on somebody else, when she agreed, as she put it, to clean my pigsty now and again. Her flat was in the same block, on the third floor, so she didn't have far to come.

As for her appearance, what can I say, except that I still occasionally slavered over her, though of course, given our somewhat changed attitude towards one another, she was infinitely more difficult to get at. In order to emphasise the dignity of her position, and to show how far beneath herself she was stooping in cleaning up my slops, she never dressed below the standard of a Queen of Hearts out shopping. Her hair style was immaculate though severe, as befitted a personality which she had no intention of changing, even if she had been able to. She wore a conservative tight-fitting expensive dress whenever she appeared, sporting a string of pearls, a bracelet, a ring, and black shoes with a strap fastened demurely over the plump top of her foot with a shiny black button. She must have spent more time getting ready to come up and do my chores than on the work itself, but for the last five years she had never been less than frosty in her attitude to me who, though I have never done anything basically wrong, insulted her to the core by the fact that I had been born.

To say that I loved her would be strictly correct, and to say that she adored me, in her Greenlandish fashion, might also bear a taint of accuracy, but there was part of her which spoke in soft but irrevocable words to the effect that I was an animal to be avoided, and that since she couldn't stay out of my sight she must keep herself as tightly laced as the underwear designs of male chauvinist pigs would allow her to get. We had each other well assessed. My flat became a tiger cage as soon as she entered it, and we neither of us minded because we knew our places exactly with regard to each other. Whenever she found me, at three in the afternoon, in bed with the current girlfriend, or even with my wife, she was as frosty and correct as ever, but I knew she was seething underneath, and she knew that I knew, and sometimes I would ask her to get into bed with us, but she trumped my wicked card by declining in the most polite and civilised manner.

She was the only woman with whom I couldn't win, because we came from the same side of the tracks, but for that reason I could deliver her more painful blows than anyone else. And for the same reason, any blow she aimed at me could have no repercussions whatsoever. She was my perfect companion, and I was hers, but for that reason she would never marry me, and for the same reason I would never marry her. For the same reason again we had a nagging and eternal love for one another. Therefore she was only fit to be my charlady. From her point of view that was the only way she had of punishing me. We had an ideal relationship which it would be base to sully with wedlock. In any case, I was already married. It was not normal and happy, which would have pained her less, but unconventional and very light on my shoulders, which must have been torment to her. We were star-crossed lovers, both hearts walking in different parts of space yet indissolubly linked. I loved her as if she was a wayward brother I could never get to know, and if she loved me at all it was as a sister who had become a prostitute not to earn a living but because she liked it – a sister she could never get to know simply because she had no hope of bringing her back to the path of rectitude.

She went around emptying ashtrays into a plastic bag.

‘And how's Mrs Drudge today?'

‘Drudge-Perkins. And it's Miss, not Mrs. How's Mr Blaskin, the eminent public figure, this afternoon?'

‘Awful. I threw my guts up in court this morning, all over the magistrate. Arthur Cobalt's his name. He's a director of my publishers, otherwise I suppose I'd have gone to gaol.'

‘That might do you a lot of good,' she said, as I had known she would.

‘Drudge by name, and Drudge by nature. Why don't you say something unexpected? If only there was a spark of originality in you.'

‘Gilbert,' she said, ‘I didn't come up here to be insulted.'

I lay on the settee. ‘Then go back down.'

‘No. There is something known as Women's Liberation.'

Being in a foul mood, I laughed even louder than usual. ‘Women's Lib? You aren't into all that feminist stuff, are you? Or did you only hear it mentioned on Radio Four this morning? You know what feminism is?'

‘I don't want to know.'

‘I know you don't. I'll tell you. It's a lesbian trick to get black women into bed.'

She staggered, and gripped a heavy glass ashtray, and for one dizzying moment I thought she would have the guts to throw it. I often thought we'd end up murdering one another, supposing in the same breath that there were worse ways to go. But I had said too much. I could see it in her face. I touched her wrist but she snatched it away as if I was a walking hot poker. ‘Sorry I said that, Drudgy. Feminism is the noblest movement of the century. I'm all for it.' All I wanted was to get down to writing Lord Moggerhanger's life story, or add a few paragraphs to my thirteenth novel, or crash off another couple of pages of the latest Sidney Blood exploit, which I was doing for an outright fee for Pulp Books.

‘Mrs Drudge,' I said, in my Noel Coward writer-in-his-country-house-blithe-spirit-and-alls-right-with-the-world tone, ‘would you be so good as to get me something to eat? I'm going into my study to work.' I stood up and, unfortunately, farted. ‘I think I've got a novel coming on.'

Dismal watched us, like a nonentity at a tennis match.

‘Mr Blaskin,' she said, ‘this kind of behaviour isn't worthy of you.'

I smiled. ‘All's fair in the sex war. I'm eternally grateful to Women's Lib for bringing it out in the open. Now I can really have a good time. It was so dull before.'

Stop, I said to myself. Write, don't speak. It was too late. She had decided to retaliate. ‘You should get married to a nice young man and settle down.'

‘I would, but women fit me better. Not that I haven't done a share of bum-fucking in my time, men and women, come to that. After all, I'm a proper Englishman, even though I don't spy for Russia. Especially when I was in the army, though we were only lads then, but I prefer to fuck women because they've got tits and, in general, nicer faces. Would you like to suck me off? I haven't had a gam for a long time. Not that it'll do me much good. I think I've got homeosexual tendencies more than the other sort.'

I had gone too far, which was just as far as I wanted to go. She huffed into the kitchen, and I went into my study. ‘If you want to bring yourself off,' I shouted, ‘don't use the coffee grinder. You broke it last time.'

Peace – but did I want it? I closed the door, then opened the rest of my mail. There was a letter inviting me to take part in a conference entitled ‘Is the Book Doomed?' and calling for a quick answer. I didn't know whether the book was doomed, but I felt that I was. Domed, at any rate, but I couldn't tell them so without being impolite. I picked up the phone and sent the cheapest telegram I could devise. CAN'T COME BLIND DRUNK BLASKIN.

A letter from my publisher wanted to know what I would call my collected works he was foolish enough to think of bringing out. I scribbled a note to say he should call it The Dustbin Edition, to be printed by the Misprint Press, and sold at the Throwaway Bookshop. He didn't know that the only occupation a madman can follow is that of writer.

I'd had enough of letters for one day. All the income tax demands and bills were thrown into the paperbin for Dismal to play Post Office with, which left practically nothing, and that made it seem as if I had already done some work. To show willing, however, I looked at the electric typewriter, and noticed that the letter H had been popping up unbidden lately, in such a way as to suggest – which had probably been true – that I was drunk: ‘It sheems as if I shtruck shomething shinister in the shcheme of thingsh.' I pulled the paper out and sent it flying after the bills and postcards, then picked up my favourite ballpoint and got to work on Moggerhanger's life, able to do so after a few days of nattering to various scarfaced Soho doorkeepers. The only way to begin was to reconnect the Trollopian tubes and sail in with no concessions to diplomacy precisely because the evil old windbag was paying me well:

Serf Moggerhanger who followed his knightly master in the Crusades to Jerusalem unknowingly made a fire with part of the true cross. He was known as the master cross chopper, until the Infidels caught him one night doing the same to the crescent, so they sent back his head in a bucket. Sailor Moggerhanger went to the Spanish Main, returned with a sack of loot and two golden earrings. He also came back with a wooden leg – somebody else's. Soldier Moggerhanger went to Flanders in the wake of Uncle Toby, and swore more horribly than anyone else. Moggerhanger was a footpad, otherwise known as Muggerhanger, because he mugged and was hanged. Another Moggerhanger robbed on the highway, a handsome devil whom the ladies (and some of their dandies) loved. Ned Moggerhanger of Calverton broke machines, but he broke the wrong one, which was a device for dispensing small beer in greater quantities than had hitherto been thought possible, for which he was strung up on a greenwood tree by the weavers. Another Moggerhanger fell from the high tower of a church while stealing lead. His son enlisted and became a trooper in the Light Brigade. He rode into the Valley of Death, and came back with gold coins chinking in his pockets, and the teeth of a Russian gunner embedded in his fist. Sergeant Moggerhanger (a cousin of Crimean Moggerhanger) went to the Northwest Frontier of India, raping and looting, and made a tobacco pouch from a virgin's pap. Constable Moggerhanger of the London docks took bribes, and went blind in one eye from too much drink. The crew of the
Narcissus
threw Merchant Seaman Moggerhanger overboard. When he swam back to the boat, they mutinied. He festered in brothels and learned how to smuggle. In the Great War, Lance-Corporal Moggerhanger got to within ten miles of the Western Front and, hearing the noise of massed artillery, deserted. He was one of the very few who got back to England and was never caught. In other words, he had turned as White as a Sheet, Wiped his face on a Cambric handkerchief, broke his Arrows, said his Amens, and walked halfway home from Passion Dale. He afterwards traded in Nigeria, came back destitute, and went on the Dole. That was Jack Moggerhanger, but Claud, who didn't know whether he was his father's nephew or his son, saw home territory as his prime concern. All in all, it must be said that a Moggerhanger loves his children, his mother, and his country, unless they stand in his way. As for his friends, count me out.

Mrs Drudge came in with a plate of steaming goulash, tinned peas, fried eggs, white toast and a pint of black coffee as weak as licorice water. ‘Here comes old grumble-cunt,' I said to cheer her up.

She stiffened.

‘Don't drop that tray, for God's sake.'

‘You hate women, don't you?'

‘Not more than most people. At least I'm not one of those Englishmen who holds his breath when he walks by a woman. I suppose that's the only sort you could really love.'

She drew a deep sigh. It was like water coming up from the deepest well in the desert. If there was one thing I admired it was breeding. I still do. ‘I don't want to alarm you, Gilbert, but do you think there are rats in the building?'

‘I don't see why there shouldn't be,' I said. ‘There seems to be just about everything else. Anyway, you'd be looking at one if I weren't so bald.'

‘Seriously, I heard a scratching above my head while I was in the kitchen. Maybe the pigeons have broken in again.'

I scooped up the food with relish, which may not have been good, but it was all I had. ‘If I never wonder why you're so good to me it's only because I realise how rotten I am to you.' She flushed, whether with pleasure or pain I did not know. I was the only person in the world who could get either – or both – reactions out of her, and whatever it was, she felt more alive at such times, I swear, than when she was on her own or with other people. And when she had a reaction of any sort I felt waves of lechery rising in me, and having gobbled two-thirds of her execrable meal I put my arms around her fairly broad arse.

She made an effort to move away. ‘Leave me alone, you beast.'

I set the plate down for Dismal to lick. ‘You know I love you. The only true words I ever speak are those plain unadorned ones which describe my undying love for you.'

‘You make it hard for me to believe.'

‘Will you type out this bit of my Moggerhanger book? Jenny Potash won't be back from Benidorm till next week.'