Bone Idle by Suzette Hill Page A

scornfully. I began to wonder if my host was a foot fetishist. I had read of such people.
    Lunch over, we returned to the drawing room for coffee; and snapping open a sleek cigarette case he offered me a Turkish Abdullah. I remembered my mother smoking these before the war; and their flat shape and distinctive smell took me back down the years to hushed afternoons in our ramshackle house on the East Sussex coast, when our parent would be ‘resting’ – it was never clear from what – on the rose sofa in the morning room. The ritual invariably involved several Abdullahs and a steady stream of jet black coffee in the tiniest of green cups. And at such times my sister and I would be firmly directed to ‘leave Mother in peace’ – although I do remember as a small boy, on occasions and on sufferance, being allowed to play with my toy elephant with the proviso, of course, that I was to be ‘very good’. As with Proust’s madeleine, the smell of that oriental tobacco triggered a sudden spate of such memories, and I savoured the novelty, enjoying the contrast with my own workaday Virginians.
    The reverie was interrupted by Claude’s reedy voice saying, ‘Now tell me more about this little paper you are engaged upon …’
    I duly reproduced the spiel about my researches into the life of Sir Royston Beano – in which at Nicholas’s behest I had so laboriously immersed myself – saying how eager I was to view even a reproduction of the original idol, recognizing of course that my host’s was one of the earliest copies and thus of particular note. ‘There are so many base imitations,’ I declared earnestly, ‘and it is a privilege to encounter one made within the lifetime of Beano himself!’
    ‘Ah yes,’ he acknowledged with preening modesty, ‘I am indeed fortunate to have it in my possession, and while I fear the original has been lost in the mists of time, I like to feel that in some strange way fate has picked me to be the custodian of its most worthy successor. Naturally, being a copy it is not valuable in the vulgar commercial sense, but nevertheless highly regarded by those of a discerning sensibility.’
    ‘Indeed,’ I murmured, trying my best to look discerning.
    We talked a little longer about my ‘researches’ and the difficulties of doing justice to private passions when so preoccupied with the exigencies of professional duty.
    ‘But at least you have private interests,’ he exclaimed, ‘unlike my brother, who seems to spend his entire life chairing diocesan meetings and writing officious letters to Canterbury. As you probably know, he is due to retire at any moment, so goodness knows what he’ll do then – but at least it will let the archbishop off the hook!’ He gave a caustic snigger, adding with patronizing relish, ‘Poor Vernon, so dull! You’ll never believe it, but the last time I tried to interest him in my precious little collection he actually said that he had far better things to do than drool over piddling gewgaws! So sad …’
    I was about to say that talking of piddling gewgaws, how about showing me the pig – when we were interrupted by the discreet chimes of the doorbell.
    Claude tutted. ‘Now who can that be at three o’clock in the afternoon? Some errand boy, I suppose, and just when I was about to show you …’ He got up crossly and pottered towards the door. I stared out of the window keeping my eyes peeled for ankles, thick or otherwise. My perusal was cut short by a voice from the hall only too gratingly familiar.
    ‘My dear Claude, so sorry to descend on you like this but it is a matter of some urgency – essential that I make a telephone call and I can never get the hang of the public boxes. All that pressing of buttons A and B, it drives me mad! Would you oblige, dear fellow … awful bore, I know!’
    I listened in frozen horror to the tones of my bishop, Horace Clinker.
    What the hell was he doing, bursting in like this just when I was about to execute my