The Fourth Bear полностью

“Elephants? Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus, adjusting his glasses. “The leviathan in my novel is the colossal and destructive force of human ambition and its ability to destroy those it loves in its futile quest for fulfillment. Seen through the eyes of a woman in London in the mid-eighties as her husband loses control of himself to own and want more, it asks the fundamental question ‘to be or to want’—something I consider to be the ‘materialistic’ Hamlet’s soliloquy. Ha-ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Clot. “Is it selling?”

“Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus in a shocked tone. “Selling more than even a few copies would render it… popular. And that would be a death knell for any serious auteur, n’est-ce pas? Ha-ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Even bigger clot.

“But it’s been short-listed for twenty-nine major awards,” continued Marcus. “I’ll send you a signed copy if you have a tenner on you.”

“If I gave you twenty, you could write me a sequel, too.”

Madeleine pulled Jack away and told him to behave himself, while at the same time trying to stop herself from having a fit of giggles.

“God, I love you,” she whispered in his ear, “but please stop messing around and behave yourself!”

“Spratt!” boomed Lord Spooncurdle, bored with talking to writers and agents and not recognizing anyone else.

“Hello, sir,” said Jack brightly. “You remember my wife, Madeleine?”

“Of course, of course,” he replied genially, offering his hand to Madeleine. “Your husband did a splendid job on that Humpty lark. Never did trust Spongg, y’know—eyes too close together. Reminded me of a governess who ran off with the handsome young silver and half the family’s boot boy.”

Madeleine excused herself with a whispered entreaty for Jack not to talk about his NCD work, as it usually had a confusing effect on people, and went off to mingle.

“Been here before, Spratt?” asked Spooncurdle, waving a hand at the inside of the Déjà Vu. “I’m sure I’ve seen that headwaiter, but I’m damned if I know where. I say, old stick, do us a favor and ask him if he has a lion tattooed on his left buttock.”

“He hasn’t,” replied Jack, humoring him. “I asked earlier.”

“Did you, by George? Must have been someone else. I must say, I never knew you were a member of the Most Worshipful Company of Cheese Makers.”

“I’m not, sir. This is the Armitage Shanks Literary Awards.”

“A literary award for cheese making? That doesn’t sound very likely.”

“There’s no cheese making here, sir—I think you’re confusing the event.”

“Nonsense, old boy,” said Spooncurdle amiably, having never knowingly been mistaken once in all of his sixty-seven years. “I say,” he added, changing the subject completely and leaning closer, “sorry to hear about that Riding-Hood debacle. Don’t let it get you down, eh? We all drop a serious clanger sooner or later.”

“You’re too kind,” replied Jack, wondering if this was a good time to point out that Spooncurdle had himself “dropped a clanger” on numerous occasions—and that shooting a grouse beater was illegal, despite the good Lord’s insistence that it wasn’t, or shouldn’t be.

Behind them the footman boomed out, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Admiral Robert Shaftoe. Never lost a ship, a man or in retreat, a second.”

“Bobby a cheese maker?” said Spooncurdle suddenly. “How extraordinary. I must go and speak to him. You will excuse me?”

“Of course.”

Spooncurdle left Jack standing on his own near the bar. He ordered a drink but was not alone for long.

“Hello, Jack.”

A small man in his late forties and dressed in a black collarless shirt had appeared next to him. He was accompanied by a thin, gawky woman dressed in flamboyant mix-and-match clothes, a necklace of large orange beads and a huge pair of spectacles with matching frames.

“Hello, Neville,” said Jack coldly. He never felt easy speaking to Madeleine’s first husband. He was, after all, supporting this man’s children and loved them as he did his own, and Neville’s continuing efforts to ingratiate himself with Madeleine and the children would have been acceptable—if he didn’t try to do it at Jack’s expense.

“This is Virginia Kreeper,” said Neville, introducing the thin woman to Jack. She nodded and stared at Jack with ill-disguised malevolence, as though Neville had said some disparaging things about him prior to their meeting.

“Hello, Virginia,” Jack replied pleasantly, and made a point of starting a conversation with her rather than Neville. “What do you do?”

“I’m a counselor,” she replied in a thin, nasal voice.

“Really?” returned Jack. “Reading council?”

“No, counselor. I offer help to people who are suffering stress.”

“What sort of stress?” asked Jack suspiciously.

She stared him straight in the eye. “Anything from police harassment to… being swallowed alive by a wolf.”

Jack felt himself stiffen defensively. “You’ve been busy recently, then.”