Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks Read online

  ‘They ought to ring the churchbells,’ said my wife, mopping her tears with a sheetcorner.

  ‘By heavens!’ I cried, smiting the mattress till the springs sang, ‘The old lion lives to roar again! Let Russia tremble! Let China quail!’

  My wife looked at the ceiling with passionate calm.

  ‘And gentlemen in Osh Kosh, now a-bed

  Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,

  And hold their manhoods cheap . . .’

  She lit a cigarette with a trembling flame. ‘I say, my love, do you suppose it’s too late to get the Empire back? Or, at least, some of the nicer bits?’

  ‘Never!’ I shouted. ‘We are just entering the period familiarly known as the nick of time, and from here on in the going cannot be anything but good. Before the year is out, vertical take-off aircraft will be dropping like archangels all over the uncivilized world. Natives will run from the bush, crying ‘What is that great shining bird that drops from the skies like Ukkra, God of Sleet?’ and we shall answer ‘It is a British vertical take-off aircraft, you heathen bastards, sent from the Great White Queen across the oceans, and you have ten seconds flat in which to start the grovelling routine.’

  She clasped her hands ecstatically.

  ‘Oh, think of it! There is trouble in the Straits . . . the natives are running riot through the rubber . . . mud has been thrown at the Flag . . .’

  ‘. . . ten thousand miles away, a tall figure in mutton-chop whiskers hails a cab in Downing Street and clops rapidly . . .’

  ‘Clops?’

  ‘All right, roars. Roars rapidly through the night to Buckingham Palace . . . the Imperial Presence . . . the curt nods . . . the rasp of pen on parchment . . .’

  ‘We have decided to send a vertical take-off aircraft!’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Ah!’

  I strode to the window, hands clasped behind me, and looked into the coruscating future.

  ‘What about this? De Gaulle criticises the movements of British hussars in the Sudan . . . our Ambassador hurries to Colombey-les-deux-Églises . . . the slap of glove on cheek . . . next morning, when the population of Marseilles awakes, there, bobbing on the tide, is a fleet of British vertical takeoff aircraft . . .’

  ‘Bobbing on the what?’

  ‘I don’t know why you have to quibble. Bobbing in the air, then. Shooting vertically up to five hundred feet, and shooting vertically down again, like great silver yo-yos, like . . . what’s the matter?’

  My wife was looking at me with every sign of fear.

  ‘These vertical thingummies,’ she said, quietly. ‘What do they do except . . . except bob up and down?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, do they carry Ultimate Deterrents and stuff like that?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But we haven’t got any. Not anything Ultimate of our own.’

  I said nothing. Something prickled against my tonsils.

  ‘There isn’t much percentage in just bobbing up and down, is there?’ she said. ‘Not unless you’re in a position to improve on it. I mean, you’re going to look pretty bloody ridiculous if in the middle of the yo-yo bit an Intercontinental Whatnot comes along horizontally and bowls you over like a row of skittles, aren’t you?’

  ‘They do fly on the level too, you know,’ I said, with a scorn I was rapidly ceasing to feel.

  ‘How fast?’ she pressed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said weakly. ‘Quite fast, I suppose.’

  ‘Fast enough?’

  I looked down at the citizens romping about in the street below. There was a new bounce to their step, a new light in the communal eye. Here and there, a Union Jack fluttered. I turned away, pity and panic wrestling in my breast, to see her knuckles whitening on the edge of the blanket.

  ‘It’s all – it’s all just another noble gesture, isn’t it?’ she whispered.

  Slowly, I nodded. But the light, though waning fast, had not altogether passed from my eyes.

  ‘All is not utterly lost, my love,’ I said. ‘One truth remains. When comes to noble gestures, Britain still . . .’

  ‘Leads the world?’ she murmured.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  10

  Mao, He’s Making Eyes At Me!

  Love is a ‘middle-class prejudice’, a ‘capitalist weakness’, and a time-wasting ‘psychopathic occupation’, according to the latest Chinese Press pronouncements. In the Maoist view, married life is an opportunity for studying the works of Mao Tse-tung and maintaining a ‘permanent atmosphere of ideological struggle and criticism in the home’. Attempts to reconcile family quarrels are considered unMarxist.

  Daily Telegraph

  Lao Piu-Fong was singing as he walked up the grimy staircase of his concrete apartment block. He was singing a song about the need to produce more 3.2 millimetre rivets, thereby prolonging the life of Chairman Mao by at least another two thousand years. He was singing despite the fact that a bus had just run over his foot and a rat had eaten his ersatz prawn during the five minute Thought Break at the factory and his best friend had been decapitated by the authorities for losing his spanner down a drain. He was singing, above all, because it was seven p.m. in Peking and five million people coming home from work were singing, and it was a thing it was wise to do if you had any plans about waking up the next morning.

  He reached the scrofulous hell of the upper landing, where he paused to thank a kindly Red Guard for spitting in his eye and bayonetting his hat, and passed on into his tiny, dark flat.

  Lao Piu-Fong had been uneasy all day. That morning, on leaving for work, he had failed to remember not to kiss his wife goodbye, which was something which always upset her. What made it worse was the knowledge that he would be unable to apologise to her, since reconciliation was also unMarxist. The only course open to him was to hit her.

  She picked herself up off the floor gratefully, took his threadbare hat and coat, and threw them on the fire. Lao Piu-Fong bowed, and began singing a song about the shortage of glue in Maintenance Area Fourteen, and how it was directly attributable to the presence of Chiang Kai-Shek on Formosa. Then his children came in and swore at him until it was time for bed; the main target of their abuse was the fact that in order for him to have become their father at all, he had found it necessary to indulge in a spot of capitalist messing about with their mother, whom they similarly reviled for allowing him to pull his right-wing deviationist tricks in the first place. With happy cries of ‘Psychopath!’ and ‘Warmongering Revanchist Tart!’ they ran off to bed, leaving the Piu-Fongs despising one another in front of the fire.

  ‘Excuse, most horrible fragment of dung,’ said Mrs. Piu-Fong, ‘but what is this I am hearing from many comrades concerning your filthy neo-Wall Street practices behind factory canteen with Worker-Waitress Eighteen?’

  ‘Is vile slander put about by agents provocateurs for purpose of sabotaging output,’ said Lao miserably. He sighed. He found himself unable to put his heart into vituperation this evening; much as he recognised his marital responsibility in reducing his wife to the level of a treacherous maniac, his mind kept wandering to subversive memories of lip and thigh. Tiny beads of sweat squeezed out of his forehead, slid down his nose, and splashed onto the thumb-stained copy of Mao’s Thoughts open on his lap. It was not easy being a perfect husband. But he tried.

  ‘Sickening poisonous capitalist toad,’ he said, ‘I am also hearing of your politically destructive laissez-faire policy with the riceman. What have you to say, dissolute cow?’

  Mrs. Piu-Fong flushed angrily.

  ‘Is loathsome lie!’ she cried. ‘Riceman T’song and I are merely discussing Chapter XVIII, paragraph IX—’

  ‘SO!’ shrieked Lao. ‘While back is turned, you are considering question of leek-rotation with Riceman T’song! While honourable first-class riveter husband is slaving over lathe all day, worm-eaten petty bourgeoise wife is sharing same sentence as pigfaced ricemonger!’
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br />   Mrs. Piu-Fong looked up at him, and sneered triumphantly.

  ‘Now,’ she smirked, ‘we discuss cheap lousy middle-class jealousy of failed husband unworthy to sit in same room as genuine sepia-toned portrait of Chairman Mao, immortal father of his people. Please to begin, small thin dolt!’

  Lao ripped his shirt, and began to keen.

  ‘I have been jealous,’ he moaned, rocking on his heels.

  ‘True.’

  ‘I have been possessive.’

  ‘And worse!’

  ‘Worse?’

  ‘You have been guilty, unworthy morsel, of interfering in discussion of matchless gem-like Thoughts of Chairman Mao, and of attempting to subvert spiritual development of me and Riceman T’song.’

  ‘Ah, so. I have been guilty of interfering in discussion of matchless gem-like Thoughts of Chairman Mao, and of attempting to subvert spiritual development of wife and Riceman T’song.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I have been having middle-class thoughts about female bus-travellers. And capitalist ideas about Postwoman Cho.’

  ‘You are a psychopath.’

  ‘I am a psychopath.’ Lao Piu-Fong stared at the flickering grate. ‘Mind you,’ he murmured, ‘I have not indulged in any perverted deviationist private enterprise for eight months. Is this not worthy?’

  Mrs. Piu-Fong spat.

  ‘You are complacent,’ she snarled.

  ‘I am complacent.’

  ‘Also you have been guilty of not repairing leaking tap in kitchen, contrary to Chapter MCDXVI, sub-section IV, lines II–V: Urban progress possible only if each individual citizen-soldier recognises responsibility to maintaining roof placed over head through foresight and generosity of Chairman Mao. Similarly, you have neglected your duties with regard to faulty ball-cock, hole in bedroom window, and short leg on dining-room table.’

  ‘All this I have not done,’ groaned Lao Piu-Fong. ‘Indeed, I am guilty of betraying great principles formulated on Long March.’ His stomach rumbled. ‘When are we eating?’

  ‘First we sing magnificent chart-topper describing the joys of building new wing on public library,’ said his wife. ‘For has not peerless Chairman Mao written: Hunger of soul cannot be satisfied with noodles?’

  ‘Probably,’ muttered Lao, sotto voce.

  After the song had died away at last, he looked down at his small wooden bowl.

  ‘Excuse, please, obscene disaster in human form,’ he said to his wife, ‘but what is this esteemed muck I am supposed to eat?’

  ‘It is from special Madame Mao recipe,’ said his wife. ‘With purpose of building healthy citizen-soldiers and at the same time destroying ugly capitalist greed-orientated appetite. Is sawdust foo yong full of nourishing synthetic protein, guaranteed free from artificial colouring.’

  Lao forked a moist blob of the khaki paste into his mouth, blenched, and pushed the bowl away. His wife, poised for ideological advantage, raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Well?’ she said dangerously.

  ‘Oh,’ cried Piu-Fong, ‘how all-seeing and talented is the great mother of our people!’

  She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What are you trying to pull, revisionist fink?’ she grated.

  ‘Nothing. But see how my former fascist greed and unMarxist appetite have disappeared through the wisdom of Mother Mao! Not one more mouthful need I eat, so successful has her policy proved.’

  Mrs. Piu-Fong threw down her chopstick.

  ‘Do you refuse, therefore, to give me the opportunity of self-criticism? Am I not to be allowed to repent for my deviation from the recipe as laid down by Madame Mao?’

  ‘No,’ said Lao. A tiny gloat ran across his lips. But it was short-lived.

  ‘So!’ cried his wife. ‘Can it be, subversive louse, that you failed to notice the forbidden bean-curd, introduced by me for the sole purpose of testing your awareness of Madame Mao’s edicts?’

  A sob shook the mean little room. Broken, Lao Piu-Fong pushed back his stool and stood up raggedly, and bowed a small, pitiful bow.

  ‘Am going to bed,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Am going to bed for purpose of self-castigation. Am indeed an unworthy husband and dialectician. So sorry.’

  And, leaving her smiling terribly at the portrait on the wall, he trudged into the neighbour room and threw himself upon the unyielding palliasse.

  But self-criticism would not come, no matter how hard he tried. Each time he began to enumerate his deviations, slim bodies danced out of his memory and writhed before him, a thousand faces rose up from his imagination to smile and kiss, a thousand slim, seductive hands reached for his unworthy flesh. Until, at last, the incorrigible capitalist spirit of Citizen-Soldier Lao Piu-Fong fell into restless slumber, to dream its dreams of counter-revolution.

  11

  Death Duties

  Up until now, it may not have been generally known that I live in a flat whose previous tenant shuffled off this mortal coil owing Selfridge’s 12/6. But eighteen months is long enough to live with the increasing burden that this debt has come to represent; and since, on the question of responsibility, I am less of an island than most men you run across, I feel the need to spread the weight a little.

  I know almost nothing about my predecessor, except that she departed this life peacefully at a commendably advanced age; I learned only a little more from the sad trickle of uninformed post that kept turning up after I moved in – she did the pools, she voted, she read The Reader’s Digest, and she once spent a holiday in Torquay at a hotel that persists in inviting her to Gala Gourmet Weekends which, from the manager’s imploring circular, obviously won’t be the same without her. At some time in her life, she purchased enough roofing-felt from a firm in Acton to warrant an annual calendar’s gratitude, and, long before that, she had been a pupil at a girls’ school in Roehampton which has now fallen on evil times and needs £5,000 to drive the woodworm from its ancient bones.

  I dutifully sent these voices from the past back to the land of the living, marked ‘Address Unknown’, together with a brace of Christmas cards wishing her peace, a sentiment I feel bound to endorse. The only things I held on to (all right, this is probably a heinous crime under some sub-section or other, but, believe me, I have paid in full for it) were a series of polite notes from Selfridge’s, requesting the coughing-up of 12/6.

  I had my own nefarious reasons for this peccadillo. Back in the early days, it came to me (not unlike a shaft of pure white light) that here I was with an invaluable index of consumer-tolerance, i.e., How far was Selfridge’s prepared to go before they cried havoc and let loose the dogs of war? Were I ever to consider running up a fat bill with them, this information would stand me in the best of steads, since, the longer one can delay the payment of bills the better, inflation being what it is. (I have never been too certain what it is, actually, but as a kid I used to buy 1930 billion-mark German stamps at threepence a hundred, and a thing like that sticks in your memory.) Whatever Mrs. X bought for 12/6 in 1962 doubtless goes out at around fifteen bob these days, and if she’s reading this now under some Elysial hairdryer, bless her, I hope she takes comfort from the thought that she got out while the going was good.

  So, just to test the plan, I hung on, opening the three-monthly reminders, waiting for the sort of filthy innuendo I usually get in these circumstances about what a pity it is that I mislaid their bill and if I don’t fork out in seven days, my humble and obedient servants will be round with the boys and have the telly back and no mistake. But nothing like that ever came. A year passed with the characteristic rapidity of its kind, leaves fell off the rubber-plant, the odd crow’s foot stamped itself around my limpid eyes, and still Selfridge’s continued to beg the pardon of the dead, and nothing more. I began to lay complex plans for capitalising on this inside knowledge. I walked the store, floor by floor, choosing one of them, two of those, fifty square yards of that, and so on, in order that when I came to make my move, I could draw up in an articulated truck by the goods entrance
and be away from the place with a complete home in about ten minutes flat, with every chance of hanging on to luxury for a year or so. It was on one such drooling foray that my best-laid schemes ganged agley and withered on my brow in one fell metaphor; turning a sharp right at a bolt of Gustav Doré chintz, I came upon a scene that made the death of Little Nell look like a Groucho Marx routine; a tiny, lacey, delicate old lady, a butterfly emeritus exuding spiritual lavender, was pressing a small package on a salesman. She was going away, I heard her whisper, and she wanted to give him something to remember her by; he was, she said softly, not a salesman, but her dear, dear friend. I staggered out into, I believe, Gloucester Place, choking with Truth. She was, of course, my little old lady, or as near as made no odds; I’d become so enmeshed in the web of greedy intrigue currently on the loom that I had forgotten that there was more to my plan than just Selfridge’s and I, two hard-boiled toughs who might one day face one another down at High Noon in Carey Street. Never for one moment had I paused to consider the old lady who had gone to join her ancestors with 12/6 worth of Selfridge’s money. The one obvious reason why the store hadn’t sent its bruisers round to collect the debt had up until then escaped me – that Mrs. X had no doubt been a customer in those far-off Edwardian days when Harry Gordon Selfridge was still worrying about his mortgage repayments. Quite probably, she had been all set to go through the store for the last time, distributing cuff links and panatellas when the call for the long trip took her unawares, and it is more than clear to me that no one had informed Selfridge’s of her passing. Suddenly, I saw her, a sweet soul, full of the simple goodness which is honed to a fine smooth finish on the Reader’s Digest lathes; in my mind she sat filling in her Littlewood’s coupons and praying for a first dividend to save the school from termites and provide everyone in Selfridge’s with enough roofing-felt to last a lifetime. They must have missed her at the store, the living image of Whistler’s mum, first up the escalator at the Sales (‘Put them ornamented bathmats aside for Mrs. X, Esmond, she’s one of our reg’lars’), smiling at Uncle Holly year in, year out, remembering every liftboy at Christmas (‘It’s little Horace, isn’t it? My, we’ve grown, haven’t we?’), a favourite with all the waitresses in the cafeteria, a paragon of virtue to the Accounts Dept.