LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND GOATS
Chapter 3
Friday 16th June London Rotten Borough of Lower Springwood
Carpe diem (Seize the day)
HORACE
Dear Lizbie Browne’s weekly Problem Page — an immense source of comfort down the years — points out your average man is less the sum of his parts. And men are inherently unstable.
Every morning Candida James digests her lucky stars. Digs deeper wooden spoon into pine-nut muesli topped with wildwood honey.
Every morning Candida James’ most private moments disturbed by the théâtre de l’absurde of the Gerbil’s shambling of spindly hairless legs, groping the lightswitch — picture-frame — door — scrag-end of bone larded with the puckered skin of a corn-fed turkey, nightshirt flaps obscenely, dead eyes bagshot red, cold sap of bum on the raw-wood bench.
‘You were drunk. Waking the neighbours. Wasting our money down the misser. Toast?’
Haddock pie cementing the dinner bowl to the downsides of his feet. ‘Hadder see a man about a dog.’
Candida James’ cold black box shudders to the strain of Shawn Lee’s Happiness.
Despite the trials of a dog’s life she once might have said she was sweet on the duffer.
The cruel country Vascular Veins of Life.
Tight pulls the silk string of her dressing-gown across her non-heaving bosom.
The coxcomb of wire-wool once a virulent glory of gerbolic grey, the tongue scooping stringy egg once flickered a lover’s kisses, carnations, daisies, forget-me-nots, lilies from the graves of the poor once sweet nothings.
Down the years mother proved right and now the money is spent.
‘I deserve a new dress ...’
‘Leave it out.’
‘... for Ladies’ Night.’
Flame-red nostrils snort the fire of a gerbil: ‘How much?’
‘Oooo ...’
Strike.
‘... Oooo less ...’
Strike while the iron is hot says Dear Lizbie Browne, says Mavis Clarke, says her mother, ‘... less ’un a thousand I should think.’
***
The world lies fallow. A stale cruel world waiting in line for Judgment Day. Ceres flogging her Furies. You shirk a leg much as the farmer on that first morning of taking to sickle and scythe.
A Chekhov sky curdled black cherries. Whether fit for peasants. Even the wildlife gives up hope. Silhouette of a black Block. Brain stilled inside a faintly fantastic and time-faded film. Krakatoa blows to the brain’s back burner <—> Pyroclastic flow to the spinal rod.
Madness in mouldy ones must not unwashed go.
Governor Archibald Hornblower Gerbil James sick to the false teeth with other people dig-dig-digging the flesh and bone until he has not a kidney stone to offer.
Deep down in the guts, the bowel section, the tripe area, the rot taking root that Life is not a bed of roses, and each gouty step planted on the prison yard twisting the Thorn of Truth that when Life’s trouble’s come, they come not single warheads but the full Armageddon <—> Walking the white furrow <—> Wind whips the fur of your face <—> Wishing to be warm in a private womb <—> And smoke billowing from every crack and black hole <—>
‘Smoke! Oh my God! Smoke!’
Ribs crack to sizzling he races the turbo rabbit <—> Run, rabbit, Run!
‘Oh lemme in! Lemme in!’ He raps the heavy metal hutch.
‘Gaveller, is that you?’
‘Of course it’s me. Open this door.’
‘How do I know it’s you? Where’s your pass?’
‘I haven’t got a pass. Look —’
‘You might be a social worker ... whore an accountant ...’
‘Do I look like a social worker? I’ve never worn sandals in my Life! Oh for peep’s sake!’
‘... or a spy.’
‘Blunkett! Open this door, you degenerate, or I’ll ... I’ll ...’
Creaking and groaning the open-heart-sesame of the Great Steel Monster. The shrivelling, shivering, sniffling Governor wails but not for the nonce swallowed whole.
Bonfire of the Insanities!
<—> What the Governor confronts as he steps onto the floor of the Ones drops a penny in the vent of the liver <—> bowels rumble <—> main vein bursts a valve <—> Krakatoa overflows the brain’s front burner <—> and peptic ulcer flushes sulphuric acid <—>
‘Oh my God!’
The battlefield of normally green linoleum lost under a bonfire of black blood, flesh and bone <—> broken arms <—> bellies <—> legs and bits <—> skulls spring-leaking puddles <—> pandemonium <—> devil’s disco <—> heavy metal drilling direct to centre stage <—> Screws barking like attack dogs and twisting in mad circles <—> ten — twenty — what were once protected tenants of Her Majesty’s privatised Hotel now sacrificial offerings for the devil to plunge pitchfork into offal and bone <—> foul fragrance of frailed flesh <—> and fingers scrunch under your boots like worms.
‘Get me out of here! I’m a prison governor!’
‘Stand back, sar!’ The barrel belly of Blunkett bumps from behind, and a red fire-cannon shoots from its tip thick white froth <—>
Bell-hammer bores brain blancmange <—> Sickening stink <—> The heart-sinking scream that signals open-house surgery somewhere free of anaesthetic <—> The gut-linings of haddock pie shoot from the hole of your stomach and stick to the teeth like floss <—>
Paradise run rotten in the state of Springwood!
Governor James peers gloomily into the not-normally breached library cell <—> trapped arm, then flops horribly a leg <—> blue tattoo of a spider’s web, and with KKK smack-bang the forehead.
The Governor reels ruptured to the rank exposure of real violence <—> The blood and the guts and the smell and the mess <—>
The vinegary tang of death <—> Trapped in a pit <—> Retching and ruing the day he departed the workhouse belfry at the rectory where as a boy he befriended ten thousand voices <—> Victor and Trevor and Vivian <—> squabbling for cell space and promises of nipple <—> The cold convent school where inducted to the duties of pain and damn dat man, damn dat man <—> Knees! Knees! <—> Get even <—> I will get even <—> Sickened to the soul-linings of the stomach the Governor smashes shut the door of a sanctuary. Safe. Solace and sound. Inside a soulless personal sanctuary.
***
Stompenführer Tosa (newly promoted from Obergrüppenfuhrer) doesn’t stretch to much of a Mountain. Molehill is nearer the mark. A mad Englishman bent on world domination and rednecking his nation before the world’s media is not so rare these days since el Presidenté Bliar made it common. But bad breath, black beard and a proclivity to sadism make Tosa-the-Man-Mountain more personable.
A common trait to your fascist leader lies in the decking of war rooms with flags of the Union Jack. Single faded and ragged tea-towel graces one wall of Tosa-the-Man-Mountain’s hovel, and kindled on shelves priceless Second-World-War relics: holey helmet, riding crop, swagger stick, freed grenade pin, crack’d pocket-watch, and pride of place pristine copy in mother tongue of Mein Kampf.
Famously both fascists — el Presidenté Bliar and Tosa-the-Man-Mountain — wire into the outside world by tuning to The Archers on Radio Four before settling to a nice cup of cocoa.
Your common-or-garden Nazi down the years accustomed to the flattery, the blunderbuss and the beautified words of el Presidenté Bliar will see at once that Tosa-the Man-Mountain speaks with deeper sincerity, originality, and a gut more sense.
Nay, let not us not besmirch the good name of the mild party leader by coupling him with a vicious, unrepentant International criminal.
Give to each fascist fair cracks of the whip.
Grant to the people’s champion fair hearings.
Marvel the velvet tongue as Tosa-the-Man-Mountain fronts a rally of survivors of the Springwood National Socialist Benevolent Party’s annual drive for Lebensraum and the clearing of liberals from the Ones.
‘Gentlemen!’
‘Woo!’
‘A glorious victory!’
‘Woo-woo-woo!’ whelp the pack stuffed on the floor, bog, sink, bed and each other’s laps. Master race breeding laid bare at its best. Nazi warriors in the vanguard of robust political thinking. Heads nod obediently like subjugate suckling dogs.
Tosa-the-Man-Mountain cracks for home with a good clean lick of a faithful riding crop — ‘I remember when I first got here —’
Swisshh!
‘— You lot still wet behind your mothers’ apron strings —’
Swisshh!
Shiny sweaty bald heads sway to the beat of the crop.
‘— Not a sausage. Not a friend in the world —’
Swisshh!
‘— Now look at you — proud fighting dogs!’
Swisshh!
‘Ouch!’ protests a lacerated Nazi, thick red syrup leaking from a fissure in his rock-hard head.
‘Six of my best men bit the dust —
Swisshh!
‘— but, gentlemen —’