James
Mallard arranged his ties by colour and width and despised
frivolousness in all its forms. Indeed his cleaner, when caught
leaving flowers on the bedside table, was fired – quite
rightly – on the spot. Tulips, she called them; but as Mallard
quite correctly pointed out, a flower in the wrong place would always
be a weed. And weeds must be pruned.
His apartment, for all his considerable wealth, was small and
sparsely furnished: photographs were deemed rather self-indulgent for
a man with perfect memory, computers had their place and helped in
contacting co-workers and so were permitted if they were not misused
(he had a particular distaste for the hash-key which he felt to have
no practical use at all). His cutlery was allowed to dull as silver
clashed horribly with his dove grey tablecloth and payne's grey
napkin; but perhaps this was because his housekeeper had left and,
being a businessman, he had no knowledge of cleaning, polishing or
dusting. Perhaps he believed that knives cleaned themselves and the
dust, where it was found, was caused only by laziness and messiness
in the extreme. Light was of great importance in his apartment; fumbling in the dark was impractical and open sunlight would have
invariably bleached his hanging suits. So, he settled for a
concoction of half-open blinds and desk lamps that created a soothing
twilight for all times of the day. It amused Mallard to call this his
'twilight zone'; although, to admit this to a co-worker would be
tantamount to a belief in fairies or Santa Clause. No, he would keep
his clever puns to himself.
He
enjoyed telling people he had reached forty; once this landmark had
been achieved it had become quite acceptable to carry a hip flask and
to buy a large, padded armchair without fear of harmful gossip. The
hip flask had been his idea, but the armchair, he had to admit,
was suggested to him by former client who found designer furniture
cold and uncomfortable. He settled on a low armchair with
steel-coloured duck feather cushions (feeling that this was a worthy
chair for a governmental man). Much like his dark secret of the
'twilight zone', Mallard had an embarrassing tendency to blot his
fountain pen repeatedly when thinking even when the nib was perfectly
dry enough to use. Quite ridiculous. But most terrible and
fanciful of all, Mallard would take off his glasses when weighing
himself on his scales (elephant grey in colour); this, he told
himself, was not to deceive them of his weight (which was rather more
than he'd planned) but to read the numbers more clearly without his
long-distance lenses. His private optician had denied that the
glasses were at all to blame – but what do these specialists know
anyway? An optician with a Londoner accent would evidently be a
little untrustworthy. He resolved to hire a new one by the end of the
week. He'd ask his colleague, Harvey Sallow, with the nice, gold
spectacles. Yes, that would do nicely.
A
keen-eyed individual would notice that Mallard splayed his feet out
quite strangely, when walking (briskly down the corridor to tell the
cleaner to turn-down-their-music-thank-you-very-much). This was, in
fact, a habit he had formed from when, as a child, he had worn
steel splints to correct his bandy legs – an inherited defect that
Mallards were known for – and he felt it quite an honour to be
'corrected' as his father (and his father before that...) had been.
Indeed, so proud that at (work related) social-events he felt it more
than necessary to tell new-comers about how perfectly straight his
back and legs are. This was, of course, a charming ice-breaker for
potential clients that quite perfectly illustrated his wit.
