Mallard - Draft Two

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.