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

cuckoo.’
    That’s true, actually.
    ‘But he knew about bombs.’
    ‘And so are you,’ added Jane.
    That doesn’t follow.
    ‘And you know perfectly well,’ she said, ‘that you’ll never do anything with it, so stop being such a bore with it.’
    Moon smiled secretly like an anarchist waiting for the procession to come by.
    For some reason Jane’s lips appeared to have been painted pink. He wondered whether the illusion was optical or transcendental. Then he noticed that her eyes were edged with green lines that shaded away into the recesses of her lids. He felt that everything which was disturbing his sense of order must be reduced to a single explanatory factor.
    ‘Is he taking you to a fancy-dress ball?’
    ‘That would be lovely. Is there one on?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Moon said.
    ‘He promised to take me for a ride anyway.’
    ‘What, on his horse?’
    ‘No, silly, in his coach.’
    Moon withdrew to re-align his attack.
    ‘You’ve painted your lips pink,’ he challenged.
    ‘Well what colour do you expect me to paint them?’
    Again he felt like the victim of a sensational ripose by a barrister who was making up his own law as he went along. But then, almost in the same instant, the prism which held him, shattered; he looked at her face and it was the same face, pink-lipped, green-eyed, only now quite unexceptional. Its familiarity ambushed him: lipstick and eye-shadow. Once more the commonplace had duped him into seeing absurdity, just as absurdity kept tricking him into accepting it as commonplace.He fell back on the bed and closed his eyes.
    I shall buy a redundant sea-lion from the circus and its musical nose shall press simple tunes from my lady’s bosom. Paarp-pippip-paarp-paarp. A little flat but no reflection on you, Mrs Moon.
    A gunshot cracked out in the street. Oddly the smash of glass in the drawing-room seemed not to follow it but to occur simultaneously.
    ‘What is it
now
?’ asked Jane petulantly.
    Moon got up and went downstairs. In the drawing-room Jasper Jones was sitting on the ottoman with his denims pulled up to the knee and blood on his calf. Lord Malquist knelt by him, ministering. Marie was not in view but a moaning sob betrayed her hiding place under the chesterfield.
    ‘Dear boy,’ said the ninth earl. ‘Has the season opened?’
    ‘It’s that Slaughter,’ said Jasper Jones, rolling down his denim-leg. ‘Ornery critter.’
    ‘Are you hurt?’ asked Moon.
    ‘Jes’ a scratch – ain’t got used to my new spurs yet.’
    Moon went to the window. The bullet had cut through one of the lead mullions destroying the pane on either side. Another cowboy was riding past the house at a stately pace, replacing his gun in his holster. Moon felt weary and resentful. He wanted to disengage himself from what he felt was a situation imposed upon him. He would lock himself into a turret room and devote the rest of his life to lexicography, or perhaps he would crawl under the chesterfield and blindfold himself in Marie’s hair, plug her gaspings with his tongue. Glass snapped under his shoes. He stood on one foot and ineffectively swept with the other.
    Jasper Jones stood in the middle of the room, smiling grimly, twisting tobacco into a liquorice-brown cigarette paper. He stamped himself lower into his block-heeled boots (winced when the spur nicked him). He put the ruined tobacco-leaking tube into his mouth – the grim smile accommodatedit without adjustment – and tugged down on his gun-belt. Having got that right he tipped his hat carefully over his eyes using his left hand, playing stiff-fingered arpeggios on the Colt with his right. Shreds of tobacco fell from his cigarette.
    Slaughter’s voice, unexpectedly conversational, could be heard in the street: ‘Whoa, boy, stop you stupid critter,’ and then rising again: ‘Come on out, I’m waitin’ for you, Jasper.’
    Jasper began slapping himself around the body. Lord Malquist stood up and obligingly held a match to