infamous Geoffrey Caine here might be called a nasty or a devil, but so, too were law apprentices.
When Richard returned to the table, he began a tirade about the two arrested as the Crucifying Duo. “A pair of comic book characters if ever there were,” he said, spouting venom.
Jessica tried to get him off the subject, off work altogether. She asked him about the British Museum, what she might find there, but he ignored her, going on about the twosome under arrest for the Crucifier's sins.
Giving in, she said, “I particularly hated the one who led the other by the nose.”
“Oh, that creep Periwinkle is a real Geordie.”
“Geordie? Explain that again, please.”
“A native of Tynsdale-raised with the pigs, maybe. A coal miner for sure.”
“A coal miner? That's rather coincidental.”
“Not at all. Everyone in Tynsdale goes to the mines for work. I've seen their like before. One is a Geordie, the partner a George.”
“A George?”
“Automatic pilot. One's the planner, and he's a weak-minded bastard if ever there was one, and the other goes about on automatic pilot. A Geordie and a George, true criminal masterminds those two, truly fit your profile of the killer, as well, wouldn't you agree?” he facetiously asked. “But then in dealing with Boulte, one must take in the Paddy factor.”
“Well, they are the right age, and they do live with their mothers.” Jessica had heard the term Paddy bandied about in police circles here, referring usually to IRA terrorists, but it had an ethnic edge to it. It meant that the criminal mind often meant the stupid mind, and Paddys-a common Irish name- were criminally stupid. “Is Boulte part Irish?”
“If he is, he wouldn't admit to it.”
London, despite its diverse population and the international flavor of its makeup, remained a haven for racial prejudice, just as Hawaii and other beautiful places around the globe Jessica had visited harbored racial disharmony. Sadly enough it appeared a global fact of life. Here a British racist was known as a racialist. Even now, she could hear Paid jokes being told at the table over her shoulder between calls for the waiter to answer the questions: “Where's the other half.”
“How 'bout the other half?” Both meant the speaker wanted another drink.
“Paki” formed an unpleasant racist connotation in its compactness. Hearing the term several dmes, Jessica asked Sharpe about it. His reply was off-handed, his shoulders shrugged as he said, “Paki-bashing. It's an extremely unpleasant activity here. At its most benign, it begins with jokes. At its most vicious, it ends with roaming gangs- usually a rat's nest of Paddys-looking for and usually finding Pakistanis to beat up.”
“Past a joke is another British expression, meaning something's not funny anymore, but rather intolerable. Most Mets in London simply don't want Paki-bashing on their little patches.”
Someone entering the pub and passing their table said hello to Richard, asking, “And how are you, Sharpe?”
“Not so dusty,” replied Sharpe. “And you?”
“Gain on swings, lose on rounds, you know? Take all due care.” And the man disappeared into the crowd at the bar.
“Drinking friends,” said Richard. “Cricket metaphors… Sorry, they're rather like your baseball metaphors in America. Endemic here, really…”
“You needn't apologize for it.”
“Everything in this blasted country has ties to the national sports. It's become part of our thinking and speech.”
“Like it hasn't happened in America?”
He shook his head and bit his lip at once, disagreeing. “Here we say at close of play, bat a brace, bat first, boundary, bowler, duck, cap, fieldsman, batsman, play a straight bat, knock for six, get one's eye in. maiden over, night watchman, off one's bat, off the mark, pitch, rot, run out, run up, sticky wicket, stump, take first knock.”
She laughed at his rendition.
He added between sips of dark beer, “For a time I played with the Marylebone Cricket Club, but I must admit, the game's become a fantastic obsession for the population here.”
“In America we've got sports metaphors all over the language map, too. We talk about bush-leaguers, rookies, getting to first base, stepping up to bat, having something on the ball, making a hit, being off base, stealing home, pinch hitting, rain checks, check swing, strike outs, curve balls, and so…” She stopped to stare into his eye and to raise her own pint to her lips. “Anything you've got in the way of problem clichds from being cricket- obsessed, we've got tenfold in the Colonies with baseball-and basketball-and football-obsessing fans. Trust me.”
“Even the police jargon uses cricket terms,” he countered. “We play in a witness or a suspect before any serious interrogation begins. As we did with the rat brothers back there today. We began with the weather, the cursed traffic, the latest on the Royal Family and the current political crisis. Then the suspect plays himself in, as it were.”
“We do the same where I come from. It's called reeling him in, from fishing expedition to having baited your hook to landing the big one.”
He challenged on another front, a smile lurking behind his countenance. “At least your government has its house in order,” he said, making her instantly laugh.
“Are you kidding?”
'To some degree, yes, but look here, our government can make a far greater muckery of statesmanship than yours any calendar day of the week.”
“A muckery? Do you mean mockery?”
“I said muckery, and I mean muckery. The British government makes a muck of everything it touches.”
“In about the same way the U.S. government makes a mess of things?”
“I hope you're not suggesting there's any room for comparison? Your American politicians might mess around, but ours muck about. They muck in places they have no business mucking. They pretend the exercise is a mental one, but we know what total mucks they are, despite the cloak of words they spew forth. They need to muck out Parliament and start over. They need to put every single one of those Parliamentarians in a muck to sweat and off their duffs. They spend their lives on the never-never. The whole business of government here has become an idle nonsense like… as in Alice's Wonderland.”
“Are you through mucking over Parliament?”
“Aye, I mean, yes.”
“What's a never-never?”
“An installment plan, and in the case of politicians, a never-never is a committee to study the problem. They have a committee to form committees. Lewis Carroll was right, you know, about us, aye.”
She laughed. She knew he felt relaxed. He used “aye” instead of yes when he relaxed, reverting back to the “sound of Bow Bells”-the easy slang of his upbringing. She liked knowing he could relax around her.
“They have a saying in Ireland: 'Will the last person leaving the country please switch off the politicians?' “
She laughed uproariously in response. She then asked, “You seem to be coping with divorce well? Copperwaite tells me it hasn't been that long.” He laughed hollowly in response, shook his head, sat up taller, and took in a deep breath. “Well, I do have a potted lecture on the subject, anyone cares to listen. Frankly, I had so many inquiries about the divorce, the children, how I was holding up, how she was holding up, that the standard talk had to be formulated, as defense. I mucked the divorce up as I mucked the marriage up, I suppose. Very parliamentary of me, really. Spent some time in therapy, and while it's now off the boil, as they say, at the time, I felt parboiled. I felt pain in my being so intense, a depression so deep, I fear going near that part of me ever again.”
She laid her hand over his. “I'm sorry. Didn't mean to open old wounds or to stick my nose in.”
“Oh, you've hardly opened any wounds, and as for being a prodnose, well, that's another term here for detectives. And since I work with the lot at the Yard, there's little hope for privacy on the issue, really.”
“But you still have wounds. A divorce is a war no one walks away from unscathed.”
He nodded, but stiffly. “Wounds remain. Tell you one thing about a divorce…”
