brother sipping it dutifully with closed eyes and crinkled brow. Primrose doesn’t talk much about feelings, a good thing in my opinion, but I think she misses him. I shall go and cheer her up and inspect the new acquisitions. I could take Duster but don’t know if the new residents would look kindly upon him, you can’t be too pushy with animals. Best leave it for a while, we don’t want a godawful skirmish on Primrose’s terrace; it might unsettle the cows in the neighbouring field.
Saturday
Well that was certainly an agreeable nightcap. Primrose on typical robust form, dishing out copious Scotch and regaling me with her student capers at the Courtauld all those years ago. Though from what she described I imagine some of those ageing mentors are still reeling from the experience. But the animals were intriguing as well. The dog, Bouncer, a shaggy brute, seemed to take a shine to me and kept sniffing my trousers and making sheep’s eyes. For an uneasy moment I thought it was gearing up to perform a baptism, but luckily one was spared the honour. And then having ‘cased’ my turn-ups it began giving my knee a series of head buffets. Primrose was delighted and said it just went to show what a really sweet boy he was. I am not sure that sweet is quite the word I would use but the creature does have a certain rustic affability. The cat, on the other hand, is neither rustic nor affable: thin, aloof and unnervingly watchful. I don’t think it took its eyes off me the whole time I was there. It is entirely black except for one white paw which now and again it wafted imperiously. Primrose assured me I should be flattered as generally when visitors call it stalks from the room in dudgeon; the fact that it remained was apparently an accolade. Well I suppose one should be grateful for such honours, however subtle.
Subtlety, of course, is not Primrose’s style. And over the whisky and Bath Olivers she held forth fulsomely on the subject of this new Latin master at Erasmus House. She is convinced that not only is he a charlatan but also some sort of shady mobster. I gather he looks and sounds not unlike the actor Peter Lorre, yet also rides a racing bicycle. Not noted for my imagination, except perhaps where grandiose building schemes are concerned, I have difficulty in connecting those features. However, I didn’t like to question Primrose’s description and listened instead to the more relevant details. These involved a series of coincidences which she was convinced pointed to the fellow having once worked in the infamous Christoff’s (now closed down), reputed to be run by the Messina gang. I asked how she made these deductions and she said she had got much of her information from Nicholas Ingaza.
Given his reputation as the slickest spiv south of London, some might think such a source dubious. But I happen to know Ingaza, or did once upon a time – though these days our few encounters are marked by a mere nod and a wink – and I can say he is no idiot. Far from it – you don’t get an Oxford first, or indeed the Fitzer Memorial Prize for Greek prosody, for nothing. Slippery as butter, of course, always was; nevertheless there’s a kind of bastard integrity there … otherwise they would never have used him at Bletchley. One of our best operators he was, sharp as an East End ferret! Well those days are long gone, but even now it’s all hush-hush and we’re still bound by the OSA on pain of some dire penalty or other. Of course his subsequent life is hardly to my taste, pretty scandalous really by all accounts. But old comrades and camaraderies die hard and in a way I can’t help liking him.
But that’s beside the point: the point being that if he thinks this Topping is the same cove that was on Malta with the Messinas then there is a fair chance that he is. However, as I pointed out to Primrose, just because a chap has had a seedy past doesn’t mean that he is still at the same game. For all one
Saturday
Well that was certainly an agreeable nightcap. Primrose on typical robust form, dishing out copious Scotch and regaling me with her student capers at the Courtauld all those years ago. Though from what she described I imagine some of those ageing mentors are still reeling from the experience. But the animals were intriguing as well. The dog, Bouncer, a shaggy brute, seemed to take a shine to me and kept sniffing my trousers and making sheep’s eyes. For an uneasy moment I thought it was gearing up to perform a baptism, but luckily one was spared the honour. And then having ‘cased’ my turn-ups it began giving my knee a series of head buffets. Primrose was delighted and said it just went to show what a really sweet boy he was. I am not sure that sweet is quite the word I would use but the creature does have a certain rustic affability. The cat, on the other hand, is neither rustic nor affable: thin, aloof and unnervingly watchful. I don’t think it took its eyes off me the whole time I was there. It is entirely black except for one white paw which now and again it wafted imperiously. Primrose assured me I should be flattered as generally when visitors call it stalks from the room in dudgeon; the fact that it remained was apparently an accolade. Well I suppose one should be grateful for such honours, however subtle.
Subtlety, of course, is not Primrose’s style. And over the whisky and Bath Olivers she held forth fulsomely on the subject of this new Latin master at Erasmus House. She is convinced that not only is he a charlatan but also some sort of shady mobster. I gather he looks and sounds not unlike the actor Peter Lorre, yet also rides a racing bicycle. Not noted for my imagination, except perhaps where grandiose building schemes are concerned, I have difficulty in connecting those features. However, I didn’t like to question Primrose’s description and listened instead to the more relevant details. These involved a series of coincidences which she was convinced pointed to the fellow having once worked in the infamous Christoff’s (now closed down), reputed to be run by the Messina gang. I asked how she made these deductions and she said she had got much of her information from Nicholas Ingaza.
Given his reputation as the slickest spiv south of London, some might think such a source dubious. But I happen to know Ingaza, or did once upon a time – though these days our few encounters are marked by a mere nod and a wink – and I can say he is no idiot. Far from it – you don’t get an Oxford first, or indeed the Fitzer Memorial Prize for Greek prosody, for nothing. Slippery as butter, of course, always was; nevertheless there’s a kind of bastard integrity there … otherwise they would never have used him at Bletchley. One of our best operators he was, sharp as an East End ferret! Well those days are long gone, but even now it’s all hush-hush and we’re still bound by the OSA on pain of some dire penalty or other. Of course his subsequent life is hardly to my taste, pretty scandalous really by all accounts. But old comrades and camaraderies die hard and in a way I can’t help liking him.
But that’s beside the point: the point being that if he thinks this Topping is the same cove that was on Malta with the Messinas then there is a fair chance that he is. However, as I pointed out to Primrose, just because a chap has had a seedy past doesn’t mean that he is still at the same game. For all one
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