""It"s about Methuselah," he said. "And now I must ask you to leave me in peace. You are pert and pretty but that does not ent.i.tle you to take up my time. I thank you for the grapes."
"I glanced at my watch. Just over a minute to go. I had to keep talking. "I"ll be off then," I said. "But in exchange for my grapes I"d love it if you gave me your autograph on one of your famous postcards."
"He reached for a postcard and signed it. "Now be off with you," he said. "You have wasted enough of my time."
""I"m going," I said, fumbling about and trying to string out the seconds. The nine minutes were up now. Oh Beetle, lovely Beetle, kind Beetle, where are you? Why have you deserted me?"
"A bit dicey, that," I said.
"I was desperate, Oswald. It had never happened before.
""Mr. Shaw," I said, pausing by the door, searching for a time killer, "I promised my dear old mother who thinks you are G.o.d the Father himself to be sure to ask you one question... ."
""You are a pest, madam!" he barked.
""I know I am, I know, I know, but please answer it for her. Here"s the question. Is it really true that you disapprove of all artists who create works of art for purely aesthetic reasons?"
""I do, madam."
""You mean pure beauty is not enough?"
""It is not," he said. "Art should always be didactic, serving a social purpose."
""Did Beethoven serve a social purpose, or Van Gogh?"
""Get out of here!" he roared. "I have no wish to bandy words--" He stopped in mid-sentence. For at that moment, Oswald, heaven be praised, the Beetle struck."
"Hooray. Did it hit him hard?"
"This was a triple dose, remember"
"I know. So what happened?"
"I don"t think it"s safe to give triples, Oswald. I"m not going to do it again."
"Rocked him a bit, did it?"
"Phase one was devastating," Yasmin said. "It was as if he were sitting in an electric chair and someone had pulled the switch and jolted him with a million volts."
"Bad as that?"
"Listen, his whole body rose up off the chair and there it hung, in mid-air, rigid, quivering, the eyes popping, the face all twisted."
"Oh dear."
"Rattled me."
"I"ll bet."
"What do we do now, I thought. Artificial respiration, oxygen, what?"
"You"re not exaggerating, are you, Yasmin?"
"G.o.d no. The man was contorted. He was paralyzed. He was garrotted. He couldn"t speak."
"Was he conscious?"
"Who knows?"
"Did you think he might kick the bucket?"
"I reckoned it was about even money."
"You really thought that?"
"You only had to look at him."
"Christ, Yasmin."
"I stood there by the door and I remember thinking, well whatever happens this old buzzard"s written his last play. "h.e.l.lo there, Mr. Shaw," I said. "Wakey wakey.""
"Could he hear you?"
"I doubt it. And through his whiskers I could see white stuff, like brine, forming on his lips."
"How long did all this last?"
"A couple of minutes. And on top of everything else I began worrying about his heart."
"Why his heart, for G.o.d"s sake?"
"He was going purple in the face. I could see his skin going purple."
"Asphyxia?"
"Something like that," Yasmin said. "Isn"t this steak and kidney delicious?"
"It"s very good."
"Then all of a sudden he came back to earth. He blinked his eyes, took one look at me, gave a sort of Indian whoop, leaped out of his chair, and started tearing off his clothes.
""The Irish are coming!" he yelled. "Gird up your loins, madam! Gird up your loins and prepare for battle!"
"Not exactly a eunuch then."
"It didn"t look like it."
"How did you manage to roll the old rubbery thing on him?"
"There"s only one way when they get violent," Yasmin said. "I grabbed hold of his snozzberry and hung onto it like grim death and gave it a twist or two to make him hold still."
"Ow."
"Very effective."
"I"ll bet it is."
"You can lead them around anywhere you want like that."
"I"m sure."
"It"s like putting a twitch on a horse."
I took a mouthful of Beaune, tasting it with care. It had been shipped by Louis Latour and it was really very fair. One was fortunate to find something like that in a country pub. "So then what?" I said.
"Chaos. Wooden floor. Horrible bruises. The lot. But I"ll tell you what"s interesting, Oswald. He didn"t know quite what to do. I had to show him."
"So he _was_ a virgin?"
"Must"ve been. But a d.a.m.n quick learner. I"ve never seen such energy in a man of sixty-three."
"That"s the vegetarian diet."
"It could be," Yasmin said, spearing a piece of kidney with her fork and popping it into her mouth. "But don"t forget he had a brand-new engine."
"A what?"
"A new engine. Most men of that age are more or less worn out by then. Their equipment, I mean. It"s done so much mileage things are beginning to rattle."
"You mean the fact that he was a virgin . . ."
"Precisely, Oswald. The engine was brand-new, completely unused. Therefore no wear and tear."
"Had to run it in a bit though, didn"t he?"
"No," she said. "He just let her rip. Flat out all the time. Full throttle. And when he"d got the hang of it he shouted, "_Now_ I see what Mrs. Pat Campbell was on about!""
"I suppose in the end you had to get out the old hatpin?"
"Of course. But you know something, Oswald? With a triple dose they"re so far gone they don"t feel a thing. I might"ve been tickling his a.r.s.e with a feather for all the good it did."
"How many jabs?"
"Till my arm got tired."
"So what then?"
"There are other ways," Yasmin said darkly.
"Ow again," I said. I was remembering what Yasmin had once done to A. R. Woresley in the lab to get away from him. "Did he jump?"
"About a yard straight up," she said. "And that gave me just enough time to grab the spoils and dash for the door."
"Lucky you kept your clothes on."
"I had to," she said. "Whenever we give an extra dose it"s always a sprint to get away."
So that was Yasmin"s story. But let me now take it up from there myself and go back to where I was sitting quietly in my motor car outside Shaw"s Corner in the gathering dusk while all this was going on. Suddenly out came Yasmin at the gallop, flying down the garden path with her hair streaming out behind her, and I quickly opened the pa.s.senger door for her to jump in. But she didn"t jump in. She ran to the front of the car and grabbed the starting handle. No self-starters in those days, remember. "Switch on, Oswald!" she shouted. "Switch on! He"s coming after me!" I switched on the ignition. Yasmin cranked the handle. The motor started first kick. Yasmin dashed back and jumped into the seat next to me, yelling, "Go man, go! Full speed ahead!" But before I could get the gear lever properly engaged, I heard a yell from the garden and in the half-darkness I saw this tall, ghostlike, whitebearded figure charging down upon us stark naked and yelling, "Come back, you strumpet! I haven"t finished with you yet!"
"Go!" Yasmin shouted. I got the car into gear and let out the clutch and off we went.
There was a street lamp outside the Shaw house, and when I glanced back I saw Mr. Shaw capering about on the sidewalk under the gaslight, white-skinned all over save for a pair of socks on his feet, bearded above and bearded below as well, with his ma.s.sive pink member protruding like a sawn-off shotgun from the lower beard. It was a sight I shall not readily forget, this mighty and supercilious playwright who had always mocked the pa.s.sions of the flesh, himself impaled now upon the sword of l.u.s.t and screaming for Yasmin to come back. _Cantharis vesicatoria sudanii_, I reflected, could make a monkey out of the Messiah.
24.
BY NOW Christmas was nearly on us and Yasmin said she wanted a holiday. I wanted to keep going. "Come on," I said, "let"s do a royal tour first, kings only. We"ll n.o.bble all the nine remaining monarchs of Europe. Then we"ll both take a good long rest."
Romping with the royals, as Yasmin called it, was an irresistible prospect and she agreed to delay her holiday and spend Christmas in wintry Europe. Together we worked out a sensible itinerary which would take us, in the following order, to Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. I checked over all nine of my carefully prepared letters from George V. A. R. Woresley refilled my travelling liquid nitrogen container and supplied me with a new stock of straws, and off we went in the trusty Citroen, heading for Dover and the cross-Channel steamer, with the royal palace in Brussels our first stop.
The effect that the King of England"s letter had upon the first eight monarchs on our list was virtually identical. They jumped to it. They couldn"t wait to please King George, and they couldn"t wait to get a peek at his secret mistress. For them it was a fruity business. On every single occasion Yasmin was invited to the palace only a few hours after I had delivered the letter. We had success after success. Sometimes the hatpin had to be used, sometimes not. There were some funny scenes and one or two tricky moments, but Yasmin always got her man in the end. She even got seventy-six-year-old King Peter of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, although he pa.s.sed out at the end of it all and my girl had to revive him by throwing a chamberpot of cold water over his face. By the time we reached Christiania (now Oslo) at the beginning of April, we had eight kings in the bag and there was only Haakon of Norway left. He was forty-eight years old.
In Christiania we booked into the Grand Hotel on Carl J ohan"s Gate, and from the balcony of my room I could look straight up that splendid street to the royal palace on the hill. I delivered my letter at ten o"clock on a Tuesday morning. By lunchtime Yasmin had a reply in the King"s own handwriting. She was invited to present herself at the palace at two thirty that afternoon.
"This is going to be my very last king," she said. "I shall miss popping into palaces and wrestling with royals."
"What"s your general opinion of them," I said, "now that it"s nearly over? How do they measure up?"
"They vary," she said. "That fellow Boris of Bulgaria was terrifying the way he rolled me up in chicken wire."
"Bulgarians are not easy."
"Ferdinand of Rumania was pretty crazy, too."
"The one who had distorting mirrors all around the room?"
"That"s him. Let us now see what revolting habits this Norwegian chap has got."
"I hear he"s a very decent fellow."
"n.o.body"s decent when he"s had the Beetle, Oswald."