bad spelling?’
‘For the love of Mike, how should I know?’ Hogg said, angrily.
He is in a filthy mood, Lorimer remarked to himself, and wondered again what harshness had been visited on Dymphna.
‘Who is David Watts?’ Lorimer tried again.
‘Your next job,’ Hogg said.
‘Who is David Watts?’
‘Sweet suffering Christ, even I’ve heard of David Watts.’
‘Sorry.’
‘He’s a singer. A “rock” singer. D’you know his music?’
‘The only contemporary music I listen to these days is African.’
‘Right, that does it.’ Hogg stood up, furiously, abruptly, to attention. ‘You know, Lorimer, sometimes I think you’re fucking barking mad. I mean, for God’s sweet sake, man.’ He began to pace angrily about the office. Lorimer pressed himself against the wall. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ, how old are you? What’s the point of employing young people? You should have this popular culture stuff at your fingertips. He’s a bloody rock singer. Everyone’s heard of him.’
‘Oh, yes. Rings a bell, now. That David Watts.’
‘Don’t fucking interrupt me when I’m talking.’
‘Sorry’
Hogg stopped in front of him and stared, balefully, frowningly at him.
‘Sometimes I think you’re not normal, Lorimer.’
‘Define “normal”
‘Watch it, right?’ Hoggjabbed a blunt, nicotined finger at him, then he sighed, allowed his features to slump, tutted, and shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Lorimer, I just don’t know… I’m not a happy matelot at the moment. My life is lacking in joy Janice has got the file on this David Watts character. Sounds right up your alleyway.’
He paused at the door, made sure it was shut and then in a curious crabwise fashion shuffled back towards him, still keeping half an eye on the corridor visible through the glass panel. He smiled now, showing his small yellow teeth through the slit in his lips.
‘Know what I’m going to do Monday? First thing Monday morning?’
‘No, Mr Hogg. What?’
‘I’m going to sack ‘Torquil Helvoir-Jayne.’
388. A Glass of White Wine. Torquil is not a particularly proud or vainglorious man; I would not say ‘pride’ was listed among his many vices, but he is fiercely defensive about what he considers his sole claim to lasting fame, and he defends his rights to this obscure celebrityhood with adamant passion. He claims, he insists, he demands to be credited, acknowledged to be the originator, the only begetter of apiece of apocrypha, a snippet of contemporary folklore that he himself spawned but which, to his continuing fury, has now passed unattributed into common currency.
It happened at a weekend house party in Wiltshire (or Devon or Cheshire or Gloucestershire or Perthshire). On the Saturday night, copious alcohol had been consumed by the guests, all in their twenties (this was a while ago, in the 1980s), young men and women, couples, singles, a few marrieds, escaping to the country for their precious weekends, fleeing their city homes, their jobs, their humdrum weekday personae. Torquil had been possibly the drunkest that Saturday night, knee-walking drunk, he said, mixing drinks with abandon, whisky following port following claret following champagne. He had risen late on the Sunday morning, after midday, when the other guests had already had breakfast, been for a walk, read the Sunday papers and were now forgathering in the drawing room for pre-Sunday lunch drinks.
‘I arrived downstairs’ Torquil says, taking up the story, feeling like total shit, serious bad news, hill-cracking headache, mouth like an ashtray, eyes like pissholes in the snow. And they’re all standing there with their bloody marys, gins and tonics, vodkas and orange juice. There’s a bit of jeering, bit of ribbing as I stumble in, feeling like death, and the girl whose house party it was – forget her name – comes up to me. Everyone was looking at me, you see, because I was so late and I looked like absolute death warmed up, all laughing at me, and this girl comes up to me and says, “Torquil, what’re you going to have to drink? G and T? Bloody mary?” Actually, to tell the truth, the thought made me want to puke and so I said, quite seriously, quite spontaneously, “Ah, no thank you, I couldn’t possibly touch a drop of alcohol, I’ll just have a glass of white wine.”
At this point he stops and stares at me long and hard and says, ‘Now, you’ve heard that story before, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I remember I said. ‘I have. I can’t think where. It’s an old joke, isn’t it?’
‘No. It was me,’ Torquil protests, helplessly, voice cracking. ‘That was me. I said it: I was the first person who said it, ever. It was