Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel (6 page)

The Risen Christ sat with his right hand clutched in his left armpit and muttered rebelliously.

‘Anyway,’ Moon said, ‘you can’t preach there tomorrow – it’s the funeral.’

‘I can preach where I like. All I’m needing is the multitude.’

The multitude
– and he felt them occupy him again; the hollows inside him contracted till their sides touched and set off waves of dull apprehension. The barriers which protected him as long as he didn’t acknowledge them, knocked each other over and his mind, caught unawares again, was overrun. He tried to separate the fears and deal with them one
by one, rationally, but he couldn’t cope. They were all the same fear and he could not even separate the causes. He only knew that the source of it all was mass, the feeling of things multiplying and expanding, population, buses, buildings, money, all interdependent and spreading-a remorseless uncontrollable, unguided growth which ballooned around him, refusing to go bang and yet lacking the assurance of an infinity. It would have to go bang in the end and Moon had been tensed for it for years. He had learned to detach himself, insecurely, and then a word spoken or a figure in a newspaper or a street with cars parked down both sides would rout him all over again.

‘Would you be after having a crust of bread for a traveller? I haven’t had a thing to eat, sir, for three days.’

Moon got up and walked down the hall into the kitchen, the Risen Christ following. On the table was a jumbled pyramid of tins identically labelled with a picture of a cowboy holding a tin with a picture of a cowboy holding a tin with a picture of a cowboy, and the words, ‘Western Trail Pork ‘n’ Beans.’ There were about twenty of them.

‘Pork ‘n’ beans?’

‘Well, I – ah – is it the pig with the cloven hoof?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, well sir, that bears thinkin’ about.’

Moon asked, ‘Is it the animals with a cloven hoof you can’t eat or the ones you can?’

‘You’ve got me a bit confused there, sir. But I think it’s the pig I should keep off.’

‘No, that’s Moslems,’ said Moon. ‘You’ll be all right.’

It was starting up again and he tried to concentrate on the tins but it got away from him. There was a pig and butchers and knives (who made the knives? the butcher’s apron?) and a packing factory, packing millions of tins, and a printing works for the labels, printing millions of labels, with machine-minders and foremen, all of whom lived in
houses and travelled by bus and bicycle made by other people (and who looks after the coolies on the rubber plantations for the tyres?) and they all got given money and had children (and who makes the bricks for the schools and suppose they couldn’t find anyone and it all just stopped?) He was sweating again and he had cut his finger.

‘Ah that’ll be a feast, no more yer honour.’

He had opened five tins. He tipped them all into a frying pan and turned on the gas and lit it, trying to keep his mind off the big power station across the river, which might have been for electricity for all he knew but it was a constant threat to his peace of mind for it sat by the river, monstrous and insatiable, consuming something – coke or coal or oil or something – consuming it in unimaginable quantities, and the whole thing was at the mercy of a million variables any of which might fail in some way-strikes, silicosis, storms at sea, a broken guage, an Arabian coup d’etat, a drop in supply, a rise in demand, a derailment at Slough, a faux pas at a British Council cocktail party, a toothache in the wrong man at the wrong time – and at any time, for no reason (if there were a reason one could do something about it) people might stop deciding to be dentists (why after all should anyone want to be a
dentist
?) and there would be no one to kill the agonising pain in the back teeth of black shiny-skinned miners who dig the coal which is put on the train which is derailed at Slough (yes and who will promise to go on milking the cows for the children of those who make the rails for the underground trains packed with clerks who take dentists for granted?).

Moon squeezed tight his eyelids against the returning accumulated fear which he could not separate into manageable threads. All he knew was that the sight of a power station or a traffic jam or a skyscraper, or the thought of a memory of the sight of them, gutted him like a herring. The technical and human complexity of the machine shook on the edge
of disintegration, held together only by everyone else’s un-awareness of the fact. It was an obvious fact and Moon did not know why he alone should have to bear the burden of it. He only knew that it was so. In a film cartoon when someone runs off the edge of a cliff he goes on running in mid-air for a few yards; only when he looks down and becomes aware does he drop. Moon had looked down and seen the abyss.

He opened his eyes and saw nothing but steam and smoke, smelled charred beans.

‘Is it burning at all, sir? It won’t have to be too well done for me at all, don’t you worry now.’

Moon took the pan off the flames. He found a fork and stuck it into the beans and put the pan on the table. The Risen Christ rubbed his hands together three times (it might have been an abridged grace for his own use) and began to eat.

‘You wouldn’t be havin’ a bit o’ bread by any chance?’

Moon found the bread, broke the end off a loaf and put it on the table. He saw that his blood had soaked into the white sponginess. He took the piece of bread back and carried it to the sink intending to tear off the stained soft-centre, but in doing that he let blood flow over the crust. He turned on the tap with some idea of holding his cut hand under it but realised that he was washing the bread. He threw the whole thing into a bin under the sink and stared hopelessly at a point framed in space by a window-pane.

There was a terrace outside. A few yards ahead of him a marble balustrade crossed his vision and steps from the terrace dropped down between stone urns to a long green lawn that fell away towards a lake with an island and a summer house, and beyond that were green hills. The tension that had compressed itself around him, slackened, ebbed away and was gone, evenly distributed about his body. He turned away from the window and realised that his eyes were open.

Moon licked his hand and watched the blood delineate
the cut. He licked it again and then took out his handkerchief and wrapped it round the palm. He couldn’t knot it so held the end tight with his thumb.

The Risen Christ bobbed his beanstuffed head.

‘You work here, then?’

‘Work?’

The Risen Christ waved his fork around like a baton and having summoned up the stove, the sink, the refrigerator and all the cupboards into a single chord, repeared, ‘Work.’

‘Oh. No. I live here.’

‘You’re a friend.’

‘Not at all,’ said Moon courteously, misunderstanding.

The Risen Christ smiled at him kindly. He ate in silence, or rather in verbal silence, for a while. Moon watching him found the power station re-entering his consciousness.

‘That lady then – Mrs Boswell, is she?’

‘Moon.’

‘Odd fellow, Boswell, would you say?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Him with the clothes, odd fellow.’

‘His name’s Malquist. Earl of Malquist. He’s a lord, you see. I’m working for him.’

‘Your boss.’

‘Client.’

The Risen Christ pushed aside the empty pan, wiped his mouth on his robe, looked sly-eyed at Moon and wrote off nearly two thousand years of Pauline dogma with a single observation: ‘That Lady Whosis, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed.’

That’s no lady that’s my—

‘She’s my wife actually,’ said Moon without rancour.

‘Your wife?’

‘Yes.’

Moon watched the Risen Christ struggling to fit this information into the scheme of things.

‘I hope I didn’t offend your lordship.’

‘That’s quite all right.’

‘It was the devil in me talking right enough. It’s a testing you see. I’m being tested all the time.’

‘I’m not a lord,’ said Moon. ‘My name is Moon.’

A thought struck him.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jesus.’

One-love to the Risen Christ.

Good loser Moon smiled at him. There was a version of that knock-knock joke.

Knock-knock!

Who’s there?

Jesus.

Jesus who?

Jesus WHO?!

Moon liked telling himself jokes. He particularly liked it in dialogue.

‘Jesus who?’

‘Jesus
who?!

The Risen Christ hit just the right note of pained incredulity. But Moon still liked it better taking both parts.

The Risen Christ asked, ‘What about them cowboys tarry-ranting about?’

‘What about them?’

‘Bit odd, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

Of course it is, of course it is, you know it is.

‘What about you then,’ he countered, ‘going about on a donkey dressed like that?’

‘What about it?’ asked the Risen Christ.

‘Odd.’

‘Not to me.’

Perhaps that was the answer. He would file it away for the future.
My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I
have prepared answers, and looking for the answer to the overwhelming question … Oh do not ask what is it, let us go and make our visit.

Moon walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the drawing-room and opened the door. The room was getting dark but the lights had not been turned on. Jane was sprawled over the chesterfield with her dress pulled up to her bust and Lord Malquist was bent over her to scrutinise her stomach. Jane put her finger to her lips but Moon had nothing to say. The ninth earl was engrossed-in her navel, Moon realised.

‘I don’t think you’re the bookworm type,’ murmured the ninth earl. ‘I’d say you were more of an extravert.’

‘That’s true, that’s true,’ Jane said.

‘I don’t think your childhood was an entirely happy one,’ the ninth earl continued. ‘I don’t see any brothers or sisters but I might be wrong’ – (‘I had a big brother but he died,’ Jane said) – ‘You’ve been abroad and I think you’ll be going again.’

‘Isn’t he marvellous?’ said Jane.

The ninth earl took out a slim gold pencil and inserted the pointed end into her navel, flattening one of its creases.

‘Yes, yes … I see a certain amount of unfulfilment here – you don’t feel that your qualities as a woman have been recognised … You are generous but like to get your money’s worth … You feel that you could be a real friend to many but suspect that most of your friends are superficial, and you save yourself for a chosen few … I foresee a long and eventful life.’

He straightened up and put the pencil back into his pocket.

Jane bounced herself on the chesterfield.

‘That was lovely, darling. Now let me tell yours.’

‘I’m exceedingly sorry, my dear, but to you it would be just another navel.’

Jane pouted, ‘I don’t know
quite
what you mean by that.’

‘I don’t know quite what I mean by anything. Ah, dear boy. Have you got your book with you? Do bring it, you’re missing some frightfully good stuff.’

I don’t care, I simply don’t care.

Jane stood up and pulled her dress down.

‘Very good, Lord Malquist,’ Moon said. His notebook was in the coach. He walked out closing the door but his hand was still on the china knob when he realised what it was that had made his brain signal incompletion. He went back into the room.

‘Certainly not, dear lady,’ the ninth earl was saying, ‘without them I would look just like anyone else.’

They looked at him enquiringly. Moon took no notice. He knelt on the carpet, put his cheek to its fuzz and spoke into the dark under the chesterfield.

‘Marie.’

He could see her lying there.

‘It’s all right now. You can come out.’

Moon got to his feet.

‘She’s very shy,’ he said.

Lord Malquist tapped him on the shoulder with his ebony stick.

‘Do you mean to say that that trembling birdlike creature still cowers in the undergrowth? Mam’selle! Come forth, the enemy has fled!’

They listened. Moon thought he heard her breathing.

Jane said crossly, ‘So! The little bitch!’ She picked up the nearest object – a china sheepdog – and seemed about to throw it quite arbitrarily at the wall. ‘I knew she was a voyeur at heart, she had absolutely no right.’

‘My dear Jane, we were sitting right on top of her. She could not possibly have seen anything to afford her any gratification, unless she’s a foot-fetishist.’

‘She was listening,’ said Jane.

‘An
ecouteuse!
What a deliciously subtle refinement!’ He
took a pace back, tilted his stick and addressed himself elegantly to the couch. ‘My dear mademoiselle, allow me to establish you in St John’s Wood behind high box hedges with your personal staff and ten thousand pounds a year. I shall visit you anonymously in my sun-coloured coach-and-pair, and punt you parasol-ed across the Serpentine while I peep for a glimpse of your garter, ah yes, we shall have a box at the theatre, you and I, and in the plum-coloured dark of plush and passion I shall feed you sugared almonds, recline with you in the dimmest recess and crumple your gardenia…’

The sheepdog smashed against the wall over the fireplace, and Moon left the room.

The front door was still open and outside the evening had come quickly, bleeding the colour out of the coach.

‘O’Hara?’

‘Hello!’

‘Hello.’

The greys were each other’s shadow on the wall.

‘It’s all right,’ said Moon.

‘What is?’

He’s got me there.

Moon opened the door of the coach and climbed in. He felt around the seat and then climbed down again and asked O’Hara for a light. O’Hara lowered himself over the side.

Moon saw him as a density against the coach, lacking outline, shadowed in shadow, a hat and a cloak letting themselves down from the high box seat. Just then the streetlights ignited themselves, suggesting a
ping
too high for the human ear. Pink filament infused their waxen coldness with the promise of light. O’Hara’s toe stretched for the ground and as he turned on it Moon saw his face, broad, negroid, black.