Today was the longest day so I deliberately shortened it by sleeping an extra three hours. I was delighted to wake up just in time for breakfast TV – The News At One.
We took the elevator to Suave Gav’s top floor suite. The elevator appeared to be infected with cocktail jazz. When we stepped out into the lobby the cocktail jazz followed us. The infection had spread.
Suave Gav was delighted to see LaFlamme and I at his Friday night experimental chutney session and was even more delighted when we presented him with a half-empty bottle of Tequila. “We’ve been experimenting with it for a while,” said LaFlamme.
He invited us into the lounge where the cocktail jazz had taken a firm hold. Later it would require an exorcist to shift it. The room was impressive, with a billiards table and fully-stocked bar. Armstrong had his priorities right. He introduced us to his wife Ethel, and his friends Dick and Jane. Collectively the group appeared to have stepped directly out of a Doris Day movie. The men wore dress suits with bowties, Armstrong topping this ensemble with a chef’s hat and apron. The ladies wore elaborate gowns styled no later than 1959 and appeared to have reality-defying hourglass figures. Even the air seemed tinged with a technicolour haze that twinkled like the crystal chandelier above us.
“Martini,” said Armstrong, handing us stem glasses. “The breakfast of champions.”
“Hear hear,” said Dick, chewing on an olive.
“This one is a watermelon variation based on one of Jane’s original designs. I’ve been working with it for a while now. The idea was to substitute my daily sun-downer with a lighter, summery alternative and even, dare I say it, make it a little healthier with the addition of fruit. Unfortunately today my hand slipped as I was pouring the gin so all pretence of it being a health shake has gone out the window.”
“Nevertheless Gavin, old boy,” said Dick, “it’s a triumph.”
“There is a virgin version, darling,” said Ethel. “Perhaps our guests may have preferred the lighter summery alternative.”
Gavin spluttered. “Good god woman, have you lost your mind? I didn’t give up my Friday evenings to join the Temperance Society.”
The martini was delicious, although LaFlamme and I were both having difficulties with the stem glasses. We’d been working with them for several minutes but were still unsure how best to grip them. We had only ever drunk from tumblers - a practical move on our part, as The Admiral is prone to boisterousness.
LeSnide had broken the record. Between the moment I met him and the moment I knew I disliked him, a mere five seconds had passed. Even the previous holder George Lyttleton had been in the room two or three minutes before I decided that, despite his stature, he was a knob of gargantuan proportions. I suppose LeSnide’s legal background was bound to make him a front-runner but I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the pace with which my disdain took hold.
Nevertheless, having accepted the commission from the Advocate General for Self-Importance to design his coat of arms, I persevered, citing all the usual graphic designer’s reasons: poverty, tedium and self-loathing. I had done what I could to incorporate the imagery LeSnide suggested but I had to remind him that a coat of arms should boil down to a very simple design and that it probably wouldn’t accommodate the heroic battle scenes he described. Nor would a self-portrait on the cross or any of the other martyrdom scenes we discussed be appropriate.
However I conceded to his request for a more modest depiction of himself carrying the world on his shoulders. Above this was his family motto, something to do with an eagle that swallowed a fly. I felt it was a reasonably successful design and looked forward to being renumerated for the effort.
When the phone rang I was almost pleased to answer it, a sure sign that I had completed a commission, but as always, this was tainted by the fear that it may herald a new one. “Mr. Boaks,” said the caller. “I’m Captain Priscilla Pantling from the Faculty of Advocates.”
“Hello, Captain,” I said. It was probably too early to start calling him Cilla.
“I’m the advocates’ clerk here,” he continued. “I’m responsible for the diaries of all the counsel members.”
“That’s tremendous,” I said. “We should diarise sometime. Was there something I can help you with?”
“Well, it concerns Lord LeSnide.”
“Lord LeSnide?” I said.
“I’m not sure he really is a lord,” said Captain Pantling. “But he insists I address him so. Probably because I’m a captain.”
“Are you sure you’re a captain?” I asked. “I know a guy called The Admiral and as far as I’m aware he’s never been to sea.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “There’s no mistake.” I didn’t know how he could be so certain but he probably had a badge or something to prove it. I have a badge. It says ‘Back to Mono.’ I could be a corporal or something by now.
“It’s rather a delicate matter,” the Captain continued. “As you know, Saul LeSnide QC is one of our most eminent legal minds.”
“Yes,” I said, “he’s told me many times. And I’ve only met him twice.”
I met LaFlamme at the Botanical Gardens. “It’s a fecund paradise,” she said. Her language was quite shocking at times.
We were on a furtive mission to procure a cutting from a particular herbaceous perennial, the name of which continues to escape me despite The Admiral’s repeated tellings. The Admiral had devised a highly effective hangover cure which depended on the leaves and stem of the plant. Early tests with a garden centre variety were promising until our combined inability to keep anything in a pot alive apart from fungus conspired against us, and as a consequence all three of us returned to behaving as if mornings had never been invented.
“Mental torment,” I said. “Mental torment. Mentalent. Mentalor. Mentament.”
“What are you doing?” said LaFlamme.
“This is how I remember the plant’s name,” I replied. “I start with 'Mental torment' then combine the words in different ways until I come up with the right mix. Talmanent. Talmator. Talmanentator. Talmanenta-latortator.”
“Tormentil,” said LaFlamme.
“Tormentil,” I agreed, nodding. “I would have gotten there eventually.”
“Maybe,” said LaFlamme, “but I wasn’t sure how much mental torment I could take.”
We found an uncharacteristically useful piece of graphic design in the form of a signpost which read ‘Herbaceous Perennials’ and followed a winding path on a shallow incline towards an extensive rockery. When the inclination turned steep, my own inclination was to turn back but LaFlamme was two paces ahead of me and I’d become sun-dazzled by her milky-white calves.
As we reached the top of the incline we rounded a corner and LaFlamme stopped abruptly, forcing the top of my head to collide with her back. It had long been my dream to collide with LaFlamme but this wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I peered round from behind her and saw a dapper looking man with secateurs in one hand, a cutting in the other, and on his face the guiltiest expression I’d ever seen. He too appeared to be blinded by the fullbeam effect of LaFlamme’s delicious legs and stood facing towards us in a half-turned position, not knowing whether to go the whole 180 or return to base.
“Phlobaphenes,” he said.
“Quite,” said LaFlamme. “Do you work here?”
“Yes?” he offered in a painfully hesitant whine.
“Why are you wearing a suit?”
“I try to be presentable at all times. It shows the plants due respect.”
When I stepped out from LaFlamme’s shadow, something I haven’t been able to do often, I recognised the man. “Armstrong,” he said, extending his secateurs. “Gavin.” It was Suave Gav, the frustrated gourmet and bon viveur from the Neon Emporium. “We extract phlobaphenes and triterpene alcohol from the Potentilla Erecta,” he continued. “It produces a rousing Bavarian liqueur called Blutwurz.”
It sounded implausible. Not that Tormentil could produce a rousing Bavarian liqueur, but that its Latin name was Potentilla Erecta. But it’s true. Go ahead, look it up.
“Potentilla Erecta?” said LaFlamme. “That does sound rousing. Does it have any special powers? You know, increased circulation, hot flushes, shortness of breath, panting, drooling?”
“Oh yes,” said Armstrong. “Its health benefits are well documented. A compound prepared from the roots and bark has been used to treat a number of ailments. It’s often used in herbal medicine as an astringent due to its tannin content. It also gave me a thumping great erection the last time I tried it.”
It was more than we needed to know but at least we’d found the elusive Tormentil. I was confused however. It was clearly a multitalented plant that could both cause a hangover and cure it at the same time, not to mention its other special powers. I asked Suave Gav if he was aware of its use as a morning after potion.
“Is it possible?” he gasped, gazing in wonder at the low-growing cluster of bushes before him. “Up until now I have been spellbound by its Blutwurzian gifts and concentrated on its roots alone. If the leaves and stems can be used to counter the undesirable after-effects of over-consumption of its glorious root-juice, then children we have indeed reached the promised land.”
I was sceptical. It seemed more likely The Admiral had been serving us a hair of the dog rather than a hangover cure, which would certainly account for the spring in our step on the days we tried it. But I took a cutting nonetheless as even a small hope of a hangover cure was better than none.
Since this encounter, LaFlamme has taken to calling me ‘Tormentil.’ I’m not sure if this is a good thing.
“I googled myself this morning,” said Saul LeSnide QC, the Advocate General For Self-Importance, “and discovered that I’m a god. One of the lesser gods admittedly, but a celestial being nonetheless. Probably akin to Aeacus or Dionysus. At this very moment people may be worshipping my graven image all over the world and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a nightmare.”
“I only asked if you wanted coffee,” I said.
“Make it strong,” said LeSnide, retrieving his phones. “Who knows how much of my time the mortals at the end of these two devices will insist upon.”
It’s difficult to express how much I disliked my new client. It was only our second meeting and I’d shifted from wanting to punch him to a whole new level of pain. I’m not generally given to fantasising due to my lack of imagination but it’s incredible how I managed to defy this with a whole range of elaborate torture devices specifically for his benefit, all of my own invention.
“I was thinking about a coat of arms for the LeSnide brand,” he said, apropos of my accepting him into the fold of my lowlife client base. “As my design interfacer, I imagine that’s well within your capabilities.”
“I imagine so,” I said. “What’s a coat of arms?”
“Heraldry,” he replied. “Blazoning. Armorial bearings. Tinctures.” Which certainly cleared it up. “To include the LeSnide motto, of course.”
“Which is?”
“Aquila non capit muscas,” he replied.
“Never Knowingly Undersold?” I asked.
“Wimpled whey-face,” he said, to my surprise. It was certainly an unusual motto. “It translates as ‘an eagle doesn’t catch flies.’”
“Oh,” I said. “I preferred ‘wimpled whey-face.’”
“I have no idea what it means,” said LeSnide. “It was just something my father used to say as he beat me. I grew to like it.”
“The beating?”
“Yes. But after so much beating I began to like the motto too.”
Meanwhile the mortals at the end of his two devices had run up a dozen missed calls between them and the incessant ringing was starting to wear me down.
“Can’t you put them on silent?” I asked.
“Silent?” he replied, offended. “Then I wouldn’t know how much I was needed.”
He returned to the subject of his coat of arms and detailed his requirements for the LeSnide heraldic crest. Ad absurdum.
I’m thinking about having my doorbell removed. It makes a pleasant enough sound, but usually heralds the arrival of somebody deeply annoying. For a while I tried ignoring it but there’s something about doorbells and The Annoying that triggers persistence. I suspected the doorbell had a visual appeal to The Annoying and set out to understand it by pretending to be one of them. But with my limited imagination I soon began wondering instead how to make it deliver a small electric shock.
I doubt if an electric shock would have deterred Saul LeSnide QC, the Advocate General For Self-Importance, as he would have considered it attention. LeSnide turned up this morning, one hand glued to a phone, the other to my doorbell. I recognised him immediately from his self-satisfaction. “I’m on the phone,” he said, and I could tell that within minutes I’d want to punch him.
I returned to my knotted ball of string, something I attempted to disentangle periodically as a means of avoiding work, and LeSnide stepped in. “Lovely to talk to you,” he said to the caller fortunate enough to command his attention, “but I’ve had 45 missed calls whilst you’ve been talking and now I’m with my design interfacer. I really must attend to more important matters.” Before he signed off, he added “46.”
Considering my hospitality a fundamental right, he slumped in an armchair expectantly. He could be as expectant as he wanted. I’d long since given up on the idea of hospitality.
“Apologies,” he began. “It is an addiction.”
“Self-importance?” I said.
“I was in Madrid last week and the network ground to a halt because of my calls. I wasn’t sure what to do so I bought a second phone to ease the strain.”
“It’s tough being popular,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Indeed,” he replied. “Doubtless you’ve seen my finely-chiselled features in connection with one of the many high profile cases I’ve supported.”
“I know you’re an attention-seeker of enormous magnitude,” I said.
“Thank you,” said LeSnide. “But therein lies the problem. There is only so much of me to go round, and if the entire world wants a piece – and why should they not? – I owe it to them to deliver.” His phone rang. He sighed. A second phone rang. “You see my position,” he said, taking the first phone to the hallway and pontificating at volume. I picked up the second phone from the table. The caller was identified as ‘Mum.’
I did some pontificating of my own at this stage. Not only did I want the doorbell removed, I wanted it surgically implanted in LeSnide’s back passage. But this too would only be regarded by the publicity-seeking LeSnide as attention.
When the second phone rang again the caller was identified as ‘Dave’ and this time I thought I would field it. However, there being no fields within throwing distance, I took the call.
“Saul?” said the plummy voice at the other end.
“Yes?” I said.
“Are we still on for tennis?” Tennis. Only the over-educated play tennis, and I therefore assumed the caller was an old Etonian.
“You know me,” I said. “I love tennis.”
“Good,” he replied. “I took your advice, by the way.”
“What advice?”
“The back to work scheme for the over-65’s. You know, wheel them out, give them a silver-seeker’s allowance instead of a pension.”
“Oh, that,” I said. “I was really drunk when I said that. I was only kidding.”
“You were?” said Dave. “Oh. Well, then I suppose it needs a rethink.”
“I should say so. Look, I have to go. I’m with an incredibly gifted designer called Boaks. He told me to tell you you’re a knob.”
“I see,” said Dave, ringing off just before LeSnide returned to the fray.
“What was I saying?” said LeSnide, as if I was sure to remember his last magnitudinous uttering.
“You were about to tell me what you’re doing in my house,” I said.
“Ah yes,” he said. “The question is how to apportion the rare talent you see before you. It strikes me that a design interfacer such as yourself could come up with an appropriate design interface for one as popular as I. I need you to manage my brand.”
“LeSnide as a brand?”
“It’s pronounced ‘Le-Snee-day’ actually. But yes, it’s a very sellable brand. Try googling it. I’m so popular you won’t get through.” I suspected if LeSnide could lay off googling himself this might not be the case. But if there’s a man who needs brand management, I know a man who needs to eat, so I forgave his appalling liberties and crimes against modesty and accepted him into my increasingly lowlife client-base.
“I suppose you want a logo?” I said.
The Admiral showed me a new contraption he’d cobbled together from discarded pieces of circuitry and an old record player. In essence it was an alarm clock. At the specified hour, the device would spring to life, activating the turntable and lowering the stylus arm onto the record. Result – you woke up to the gentle sound of a Chopin sonata or koto music from Japan. He hadn’t tried it yet but assured me it would be 100% effective.
I doubted whether the invention would ever be commercially viable, what with its need for discarded pieces of circuitry and an old record player, but the Admiral countered that my use of the word ‘viable’ was pejorative, whatever that means.
We left his flat to find the nearest purveyor of vigorous dark ale and spent several hours testing degrees of vigour before the barman called time. At this point the Admiral stood, briefly, then sat down again. He stood a second time and buttoned his cardigan, badly, leaving an extra button dangling at the bottom. He sat down once more and suggested we try again, heartily, only this time that I should do the standing. It seemed only fair so I stood, abruptly, knocking over both chair and table and, attempting to retain a shred of diginity, blaming him.
There was a limit to how far we would get in such a condition and it was decided that, the Admiral’s flat being nearest, it would be far enough if I could reach his sofa. En route to the sofa The Admiral explained he had an early start, as he had a couple of days’ work at the hospital devising a way of keeping tags on runaway patients. He said it would be an opportunity to test his new alarm clock and were it not for runaway patients he would have no use for such a gadget.
“I’m going to make doubly sure I don’t sleep in,” said the Admiral, his last words of the evening as he set the device for 7am and left me muttering incomprehensibly about kotos.
I slept as if consigned to a morgue but was awoken by the gentle stirrings of Motorhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’ at a level likely to have been set at the Admiral's last party. It was a testament to his electronic ingenuity that the device actually worked, but it didn’t work for long as a high velocity boot was soon to be seen heading towards it from the direction of the sofa.
LaFlamme and I hit the town last night. Judging by my aching head this morning, the town must have hit me right back. It was a cold night and on the way to Flanagan's my fingers went numb.
"I've got green fingers," I said, waving them at LaFlamme.
"What about the palm I gave you?" she said.
"The crispy one?"
"Yes," she said. "The crispy one. You know crispiness is not a natural state for plants, don't you?"
"How was I meant to know it needed water?" I said in my defence, which admittedly was weak. "Anyway that's not what I meant. I can't feel my fingers."
"That's Raynaud," said LaFlamme.
"What's Raynaud?" I replied.
"Your fingers."
"My fingers are Raynaud? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Some guy called Raynaud invented cold fingers," she said. "If it wasn't for him, your fingers would be toasty now." She put my fingers between her palms and rubbed them vigorously. It was oddly maternal and oddly erotic at the same time. I made a mental note to get therapy as soon as possible.
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