“Is that what you did?”
“Yes.”
“But surely not into a bag the way Woresley did?”
“Don’t be an ass, Oswald. I don’t need a bag.”
“Of course not . . . no . . . I see what you mean now . . . but wasn’t it a bit tricky? What I mean is . . . you facing the other way and all that . . . and him coming at you like a battering-ram . . . you had to be pretty quick, didn’t you?”
“I was quick. I caught it in mid-air.”
“But didn’t he twig?”
“No more than the bull did,” she said. “Less so, in fact, and I’ll tell you why.”
“Why?”
“First of all, he was going mad with the Beetle, right?”
“Right.”
“He was grunting and snorting and flapping his arms, right?”
“Right.”
“And his head was in the air just like the bull’s, right?”
“Probably, yes.”
“But most important of all, he was assuming I was a man. He thought he was doing it to a man, right?”
“Of course.”
“And his pizzle was in a good place. It was having a good time, right?”
“Right.”
“So in his own mind there was only one place it could be. A man doesn’t have any other place.”
I stared at her in admiration.
“Bound to fool him,” she said. She twisted a snail out of its shell and popped it into her mouth.
“Brilliant,” I said. “Absolutely brilliant.”
“I was rather pleased with it myself.”
“It’s the ultimate deception.”
“Thank you, Oswald.”
“There’s just one thing I can’t fathom,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“When he came at you like a battering-ram, didn’t he take aim?”
“Only after a fashion.”
“But he’s a very experienced marksman.”
“My dear old frump,” she said, “you can’t seem to get it into your head what a man’s like when he’s had a double dose.”
I jolly well can, I told myself. I was behind the filing cabinets when A. R. Woresley got his.
“No,” I said, “I can’t. What is a man like when he’s had a double dose?”
“Berserk,” she said. “He literally doesn’t know what the other end of him’s doing. I could have shoved it in a jar of pickled onions and he wouldn’t have known the difference.”
Over the years I have discovered a surprising but simple truth about young ladies and it is this: The more beautiful their faces, the less delicate their thoughts. Yasmin was no exception. There she sat now across the table from me in Maxim’s wearing a gorgeous Fortuny dress and looking for all the world like Queen Semiramis on the throne of Assyria, but she was talking vulgar. “You’re talking vulgar,” I said.
“I’m a vulgar girl,” she said, grinning.
The Volnay arrived and I tasted it. Wonderful wine. My father used to say never pass up a Volnay by a good shipper if you see one on the wine card. “How did you get away so soon?” I asked her.
“He was very rough,” she said. “Rough and sort of spiky. It felt as though I had a gigantic lobster on my back.”
“Beastly.”
“It was horrid,” she said. “He had a heavy gold watchchain across his waistcoat which kept grinding into my spine. And a big watch in the waistcoat pocket.”
“Not good for the watch.”
“No,” she said. “It went crunch. I heard it.”
“Yes, well . . .”
“Terrific wine this, Oswald.”
“I know. But how did you get away so quickly?”
“That’s bound to be a problem with the younger ones after they’ve had the Beetle,” she said. “How old is this fellow?”
“Forty-eight.”
“In the prime of life,” she said. “It’s different when they’re seventy-six. At that age, even with the Beetle, they soon grind to a halt.”
“But not this chap?”
“God, no,” she said. “Perpetual motion. A mechanical lobster.”
“So what did you do?”
“What could I do? It’s either me or him, I said. So as soon as he’d had his explosion and delivered the goods, I reached into my jacket pocket and got out the trusty hatpin.”
“And you let him have it?”
“Yes, but don’t forget it had to be a backhander this time and that wasn’t so easy. It’s hard to get a good swing.”
“I can see that.”
“Luckily my backhand’s always been my strongest point.”
“At tennis you mean?”