Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

answer that would be all the answers, but it kept coming out so simple that he distrusted it.
    ‘You know,’ said Jane, ‘I used to think that the smell of leather and horses and armpits and all that was
the
most masculine smell, but I must say I find your lord’s aroma of spiced smoky lemon trees just
rrravishing
… it makes me think of being seduced to the sound of harpsichords. I think that’s a sign of maturity, don’t you? – I mean I used to imagine myself being
rrraped
across the hump of a galloping camel.’
    She looked at him brightly.
    ‘I can’t play the harpsichord,’ Moon said.
    ‘Perhaps you could
hum
or something, behind a screen.’
    ‘Yes.’
    She looked at him unbrightly.
    ‘I’m only
teasing,
darling.’
    ‘I know,’ Moon said. ‘I know.’
    Jane smiled at him and was reassured.
    ‘Jasper is absolutely furious! I think your lord is perfectly sweet and frightfully good looking, and he’s being very nice to Jasper. Of course he’s got the niceties. He’s helping Jasper with his spurs.’
    Spurs.
    ‘He’s got them on wrong and apparently he hacks himself around the legs every time he takes a step, but he says he prefers them that way. Of course he’s only being difficult.’
    Moon plunged, without faith.
    ‘Who the hell is he and why is he wearing those clothes? – and what was he doing with you – oh
Jane,
why do you—?’
    Jane bit her lip to keep back the tears that trembled on the edge of memory.
    ‘I had a
fall.
I
hurt
myself, very badly. You should have seen it, it was all
bruised.’
    ‘You fell off his horse?’
    ‘I tripped, in the bathroom. It was jolly lucky he was there.
You
weren’t,’ she accused him.
    Well, I wasn’t, was I? Girl falls in bathroom, hurts bottom, husband absent, passing cowboy aids with rub. Happens every day in the old West.
    ‘Were you surprised?’
    ‘Of course I was surprised, I
fell.
Can you zip me up.’
    ‘Surprised that a cowboy should be riding by just at that moment.’
    ‘He wasn’t riding by, silly, he came to see me.’
    ‘Do many cowboys come to see you?’
    ‘Two.’
    ‘That’s not many.’
    ‘Quite enough, darling. Can you pass me one of those sweeties, I feel like a marshmallow.’
    There was a box big enough to hold a hat, transparent, beribboned layered with confectionery in paper nests. Moon took unfair advantage of her reaching out for the sweet, and squeezed her breast.
    ‘You’re right – you do feel like a marshmallow.’
    But it felt quite insensate (it was something to do with the way she disregarded the gesture) and he thought that if he pressed it in a particular way it would make a noise like a klaxon.
    ‘How long have they been coming to see you?’
    ‘A few days. The poor boys, they hate each other.’
    Every response gave Moon the feeling that reality was just outside his perception. If he made a certain move, changed the angle of his existence to the common ground, logic and absurdity would separate. As it was he couldn’t pin them down.
    He put the bomb carefully next to the telephone beside the bed.
    ‘Well, I’ll throw my bomb at him next time,’ Moon said.
    ‘No you won’t,’ said Jane mildly, predicting rather than prohibiting. ‘Anyway you wouldn’t do him any damage unless you hit him on the head or something.’
    ‘That’s all you know.’
    ‘Uncle Jackson couldn’t make a bomb.’
    ‘He made this one.’
    ‘Go on, set it off then. You’ll see.’
    ‘No,’ said Moon. ‘Not now. I don’t want to waste it.’
    ‘You’re an idiot, and Uncle Jackson was an idiot.’
    ‘He was very clever with his hands. He knew about bombs. He was a
scientist,
wasn’t he?’
    Jane used her hairbrush to signal scorn.
    ‘Set it off then, see if anything happens.’
    ‘Nothing would happen,’ said Moon craftily. ‘I’ve got it on the twelve-hour fuse.’
    ‘I’m sick of it.’
    ‘You would have seen it work if the Germans
had
come for Uncle Jackson.’
    ‘Uncle Jackson was