Free Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel by Tom Stoppard

blue cravat?’
    ‘Something tawny – yellow perhaps, deep red possibly – but certainly nothing green.’
    ‘Well there’s lots of different colours so go down and mix yourself one you like. And mix me one too. I’ll be wearing my Paisley silk punting suit.’
    ‘Gin, gin and tonic, vodka, vodka and tonic or plain tonic. It is impossible to complement Paisley and vulgar to compete.’
    Style?
    Moon sat on the bed, bowed, holding the handkerchief in one hand and the cigarette in the other, their scents rising in subtle titillation of his nostrils. His cut hand stung but the blood had dried. He had lost his own handkerchief somewhere, he didn’t know where.
    There is everything else. Substance. I stand for substance.
    That wasn’t true at all, he didn’t even know what it meant. He stood for peace of mind. For tidiness. For control, direction, order; proportion, above all he stood for proportion. Quantities – volume and number-must be related to the constant of the human scale, proportionate. Quantities of power, of space and objects. He contracted his mind, try to refine his subconscious from the abstract to the specific but there was a middle ground which he could not negotiate. He could only jump to one of a score of neuroses – the way the glass in a train window, infinitesimally loose in its frame, would shiver with a tiny chattering noise against the steel while Moon sat next to it for hours, holding himself in, waiting for it to explode around him.
    ‘Do buck up, darling, it’s getting on for nine.’ Moon saw that Lord Malquist and the Risen Christ had gone.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘I want to get undressed,’ said Jane.
    ‘Go on then.’
    ’You said you’d run my bath.’
    ‘What’s the matter then?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    He said, ‘I’ll undress you.’
    ‘Don’t be silly.’
    ‘With my teeth.’
    ‘What an extraordinary idea.’
    ‘On my honour, hands behind my back.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then undress me with your teeth.’
    ‘What
has
come over you?’
    ‘I’m ravaged,’ said Moon, ‘by lust.’
    ‘You’re disgusting. Get out.’
    ‘No,’ Moon said. ‘I’ve come to claim my marital rights. I’ve come at last. Prepare yourself.’ He bared his teeth.
    Jane squealed and threw a perfume bottle at him, and then another and then a hairbrush, several smaller bottles, a few shoes and finally an eighteenth-century gilt mirror which exploded around his head, violent as plate glass bursting out of a train window. Moon exhaled as if his body were one big lung. The spring unwound itself, proportion was reestablished. He rocked blind in the great calm, his mouth loose, his legs gone. He knew what it was to solve the world.

III
     
    The Risen Christ was waiting for him in the corridor.
    ‘Yer honour.’
    Moon’s left eyebrow felt damp. When he brushed at it the back of his hand came away bloodied from a cut over the eye.
    ‘Yer honour, did I fail you in some way, did I?’
    ‘Please don’t blame yourself… My expectations are not realistic.’
    ‘You got the wrong man?’ asked the Risen Christ.
    Moon studied his face for any sign of divination but the rough features peeped innocent in their surround of hair.
    ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
    He made to move on but the Risen Christ caught him by the sleeve.
    ‘There’s a bitty cut on your face, sir.’
    ‘It’s all right.’
    ‘I shouldn’t have come upstairs like that.’
    ‘Don’t mention it.’
    ‘You see, I was after offering you employment.’
    ‘Employment?’
    ‘Sure and you’ll be wanting somethin’ fine to chronicle – I have risen and come to the city – now is that a great thing to record for you?’
    ‘I’m fully occupied at the moment.’
    ‘You could be the Fifth Gospeller and no mistake.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Moon said.
    ‘Ah. Right then. There’ll be many that be honoured.’
    ‘I hope so.’
    Moon looked at the smear of blood on the Risen Christ’s beard and felt compassionate.
    ‘I’m sorry I hurt