Prelude To A Certain Midnight

‘I don’t know, I don’t know why anything!‘ cried Mr Pink, with tears in the corners of his eyes. ‘I know what. I don’t know why. And so do you, Tom Beano, so do you!’

‘So do I what, Pink?’

‘Beano, you know right from wrong.’

‘Aha?’ said Beano, closing one eye. ‘And what if I do?’

‘Oh dear me, dear me!‘ said Mr Pink. ‘All this is vanity, Tom Beano, and you know it. How dare you talk the way you talk? How dare you do it? How dare you ask me “Where was God”? Where were you, Tom Beano? Where were you when that deed was done?’

‘All right, then, and where were you?’ asked Beano.

‘I was spoiling sheets of foolscap paper,’ said Mr Pink, slowly. ‘Scribble, scribble, scribble…’ The tears in his eyes pushed themselves forward and came out.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Pink,’ said Beano.

‘You didn’t upset me, bless you, Torn.’

‘Then what the hell are you crying for?’

‘Beano! Does some crazy conceit make you believe that anything you could say might get a tear out of my eye? God forgive you!’

‘Ah! God forgive me, eh? Now listen to reason. Is God allpowerful: yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet you ask God to forgive me. Is that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now listen …’

‘Oh, please!’ said Tobit Osbert. ‘Do stop it!’

Sir Storrington slapped every back within reach and stammered: ‘Kiss and be friends, what?’ Thea Olivia, in her satisfied way, glanced from face to face. Hemmeridge, who was annoyed, looked away. Shocket the Bloodsucker was leering at her. The word had already got around that Thea Olivia was very wealthy and had, as people said, ‘Ideas’.

She knew that everyone believed that she wanted a husband; and smiled inside herself. She wanted someone with a bronze head and a chiselled mouth, a few inches taller than herself; diffident, with a suggestion of passion; impecunious yet proud — a terrible but sensitive man, intellectually isolated, envied by men and adored by women; a man into whose reluctant hand it would be necessary to press (with conspiracies and blandishments) the occasional five-pound note when the waiter was not looking.

He would be honourable: his sufferings would know no bounds. From time to time he would try to commit suicide but she would be there in the nick of time, to divert the pistol or catch his ankles as he dived over the edge of the sixth-storey penthouse roof. (He was not the sort of sneak that crawls into a gas oven or opens a vein in a hot bath.) He would need looking after. There would be important papers … documents … perhaps somewhere or other an importunate wife.

She would alter all that.

Gently, coolly, caressingly — cheek to bronze cheek, hand to fevered forehead — Thea Olivia would coax out folly like a blackhead and cream the pitted surface of his soul.

One day he would leave her. But she would wait. He’d come back — sheepish, stinking of Chanel Number Five, red-eyed, gulping, repentant — and she would receive him quietly, yet with something like ecstasy, everything having been forgiven. Later, looking down at his handsome, exhausted face, she would say to herself: ‘_Poor wretch. All men are alike_ …’ After all he was only a man … will-less, maculate, hungry for forgiveness.

Thea Olivia could have made do with Sir Storrington, Tobit Osbert, Hemmeridge, or Tom Beano: there was plenty in them to occupy her great capacity for forgiveness and Sean Mac Gabhann might have done at a pinch; or Graham Strindberg. It would, in fact, be rather pleasant to give Mac Gabhann money. She would know what he was after when he became sweet, attentive, and full of charm, when his fascinating Irish brogue cooed and purred at double pressure. She would see through it, and, knowing that she was going to give in in any case, pretend to be adamant. No, not another shilling, you naughty, improvident man! Then he would turn his charm up like a gas jet: he would glow with charm as he set himself the task of wooing the cheque-book out of her little papier-mache and mother-ofpearl desk. In the end, when he thought that he had failed and was on the verge of an attack of the sulks, she would hand him an envelope and tell him with a little silvery laugh that she had written him the cheque the night before.

It would be fun, too, with Graham Strindberg. He was so tolerant; they could spend their days being tolerant together. As for Sir Storrington, he was a naughty boy also. He drank. She would try to cure him of that, to wheedle him out of his bad habits; be a mother to him; wean him from the black bottle. In that case she would be Lady Thirst; which would sound very pleasant indeed.

Or she could take Tom Beano in hand, reason with him, and bring him to God. To Tobit Osbert she would be a kind, clever, beloved mama — a guiding star. She would pull that loose-knit personality together, and make something of him; and then how grateful he would be!

Of course, there would be no sex in it; Thea Olivia had never thought much about that kind of thing. She was pure in her dreams of marriage. In point of fact, she would not have married the best man in the world to save his life. She had her dreams; they were enough for her. She was taking no chances. If anything happened to break those dreams, what would be left? The dirty realities of a sordid world. It was better to dream. She looked again at the animated face of Sean Mac Gabhann and smiled at him, in her immaculate, maternal way. But he was in conversation with Monty Bar-Kochba. It was an uneasy conversation. The Zionist and the Irish Nationalist found themselves in complete accord. This had never happened before, and the novelty of the situation struck them both tongue-tied.

Monty Bar-Kochba looked at Mac Gabhann with suspicion. But then, he looked at everybody with suspicion. His soul was a fine filter that could separate from the current of any conversation a little muddy residue of unsuspected insults. You have, no doubt, blown a mouthful of cigarette smoke through a stretched handkerchief in order to