The other day I dined at the Pelicans Club as Galahad Threepwood’s guest. Gally had left me briefly alone near the entrance, to pay out on a wager he’d taken with Rorke, the butler.
That showed the sporting spirit, but it was how I fell into the hands, or at least the ambit, of the Club Bore.
The man attracted my attention with a flap of his newspaper and a fixed stare, so I did the polite thing and approached, extending my hand. His name was Carstairs, and in seconds I realised he was not only going to address me but actually tell me anecdotes. But the eye he cast on me was definitely glittering, and there’s no escape from that sort of thing.
His story was interrupted by the vacuum cleaner, which – or who – was doing lengths of the carpet. Carstairs had taken a seat in the corner that let him monitor all arrivals and departures, but at that stage of the cleaning that meant that every pass of the vacuum cleaner began and ended at this feet. Carstairs simply spoke through the vacuum cleaner’s visitations, neither pausing nor raising his voice, and that and my own wandering attention mean that parts of the story are lost.
Carstairs’ story
In chains and the 1970s. Pelican Club stories all happen in about 1913, while Carstairs’ story seems to date from about 1870. Pardon, but your timeslips are showing.
“Africa, of course, but one of the lusher parts … downpour, so stayed in a mokhoro … sort of round hut thing … girl chained to the table leg, never got the drift of why … not a stitch on her … skin gleamed like a grand piano …
“No, no, don’t mind telling you … nuzzled at my … undid my buttons with her … worried me a bit that she’d filed her teeth … but what can a man do, if a lady … unchained her afterwards … slapped her rump, and that made her frisky …
“Absolutely true, old bean… not a bed; a sort of cot … collapsed but that didn’t stop us … then the hut fell over … sprawled in the mud …
“Crowd of angry chaps outside … supposed to stay a virgin, apparently … chased after me waving their mulamu … father stuck me to a tree … could see his point of view … hung there for eight days … only when I laughed.”
Gally rescued me at that point, and we went off to the dining room. Gally led the way like a dapper drum-major, but as he marched towards the roast lamb he threw a remark over his shoulder. “Oh, you must’t worry about Carstairs.”
I sighed. “Never been east of Callais in all his life, has he?”
“Never been east of Soho, old egg.”
Oh, we’re all laughing now… until it’s you sitting in the corner, rattling on about Qing and Raylene while the automated cleaning robot hums quietly to and fro, and your audience chuckles and murmurs to one another, “oh you mustn’t worry about *that* guy…”
Well, never trust a Wodehouse character.
Still, I’d have loved to have had the adventure Carstairs claimed to have had. It sounded like enormous fun, though I suppose I only wrote it that way. Still, it felt like it was worth being speared to a tree for eight days.
The truth, for me, often just peters out and doesn’t make a good story. Which is often a problem for this thuddingly earthbound blog. And me. Things happen to me, or I make them happen, but they’re seldom _stories_.
In this blog it’s all first drafts, and I do mostly tell the truth in those. But if someone were to come at me with a chequebook and ask me to write a second draft, I’d be willing to shape the stories and give them proper beginnings and satisfying O’Henry endings.
Till then, I’m pretty much what you read. I think I’m jealous of someone like Carstairs. The Club Bore is never really boring.
You’re not from Ile de Niue, are you?
No – I’m from a Serge Gainsbourg song. Where the hell is the Ile de Niue? Ohhh… I see.
And don’t underestimate your story-telling skills. I’m still at the edge of my seat, waiting to find out what happened to that guy who dragged you away from Qing’s bedroom (or should I say “ass”?) to save him from being hounded out of town by a vengeful ex-girlfriend.
Or did I miss that instalment?
The guy who dragged me away from – out of? – Qing’s ass was Mikey. His rescue, and my torturing him after the rescue by playing horrible music at him in the car on the two-hour drive home, is told in this instalment:
http://jerusalemmortimer.com/mouth-to-mouth-23-going-home/
A secret – don’t tell a soul – is that Qing turned up in my life again eight years later. And set a story in motion. It’s unusual because that story’s both true and well-shaped in story terms, with a twist ending and everything. So the work’s been done for me?
I hope it won’t take me eight years to get round to writing it, but there are other projects to be finished before I start on that one. Anyway, Qing does turn up in this blog again. Truth is, I’m quite nervous about doing it justice, but it is a great story.
Also, derrr to me. That was Gainsbourg at the height of his hand-cuffing Jane Birkin to the furniture, beating her with a riding crop, and writing songs with her about fucking, er, period.
I knew that. (Me neither.)