Smoothly slips the Professor along the nearside panel and row of chairs and dips opposite the Man-Mountain; General Chopper sporting baby-teeth, freckles, and fingering best blade under the table; Gonzalez-the-Basque-Bank-Robber chomping a matchstick moody-’n’-meany; and Benjamin left feeling the last man standing for the funeral. Gingerly he lowers to the edge of a green plastic chair and leaves the door ready a crack.
The Professor blasting both blue barrels into the backs of Tosa-the-Man-Mountain’s brain-flaps. ‘My dear Tosser.’
‘Tosa. Toe-sar. My mamma named me from a Japanese fighting dog.’
‘That makes your mamma a bitch, man.’
‘Wodge …’ A lone bluebottle buzzes in square formations above the dewy bald head of Tosa-the-Man-Mountain. ‘… Wodge you say about my mamma?’
‘I said your mamma’s a Betjeman fan. John Betjeman. Plays left-back for Slough.’
‘Nerder heard of him.’ Thrusts Tosa-the-Man-Mountain callus sausage-fingers into a grizzly black beard. ‘Now you listen to me. If you’re half as brainy as these liberal extremists make out —’
‘My dear Tosser …’
‘— then you’re gonna show us how we get outta this dump.’
Sinister silence anaethetizes the ensemble of psychopaths, the ether disturbed by a chuffing bluebottle and a puffing Professor. ‘You — want me — to show you —’
‘Heever you get us out o’ this dump,’ mutters Tosa-the-Man-Mountain, committed to the cause of freedom and excess violence, ‘or I’m gonna barbecue your three chums here.’
‘Who? These three toilets? Pah! I barely know them.’
‘Knees, I’m warning you.’ Tosa-the-Man-Mountain bearing black-’n’-broken battle-gnashers.
The company of psychopaths staring in respectful silence as the Professor pulls from a top pocket scraps of paper he arranges like Scrabble tiles, scribbling dramatically with a pencil stub.
‘Last bloke to escape from Springwood,’ chirrups the cheerful General Chopper, ‘was that spy, er … George Flake. Then they called in Mountbatter to beef up security. Barbed-wire. Cameras. And dogs,’ slobbers Chopper. ‘Dirty great big Alsatian dogs.’
‘That’s no way to talk about Tosser’s mother,’ reproves the Professor.
‘Toe-sar. TOE-SAR!’
The Professor consults the first scrap: ‘Option One. Chopper here breaks your legs — herr … We’d better break your arms to be on the safe side — hun that should get you into the Royal Infirmary. Herrr ... Grab yourself a nurse’s uniform —’
‘And how many three-hundred-pound, six-foot-four-inch nurses do they have working at the Royal Infirmary?’ rumbles the Man-Mountain.
‘All right then,’ relents the Professor smoothly, ‘you can use our secret tunnel.’
‘But you’re up on the Fours,’ yaps Tosa-the-Man-Mountain and rapping the table with a cannonball of a fist.
‘Damnit, Tosser. You’ve uncovered our weak spot.’
‘Knees, I’m warning you —’
‘Option Two. Tosser, how many tanks you got on the payroll?’
‘Tanks?’ Tosa-the-Man-Mountain volcano-red and with advanced signs of an unstable eruption. ‘And how the fuck we grunta get a tank frew the streets of London without the Filth sussing what’s gaaaing daaawn?’
‘Option Three. We build you a glider plane — we smuggle the bits on the roof —’
‘Look, Knees. Don’t you think the Screws ’ll object to a fuckin’ glider plane being built on the floor of the Ones?’
‘Damnit, Tosser, you’re one step ahead of me.’
‘TOE-fuckin’-SAR!’
‘Option Four. Whatcha call those buzzy things with the big blades?’
‘Drones.’
‘No, not drones. Bigger.’
‘Er … bellychoppers … Bellychoppers!’ bellows Tosa-the-Man-Mountain before a vision of the Promised Land. ‘Hiss obvious. Why didn’t hi fink of it before? Bellychoppers!’ A lone brave bluebottle hovers above the summit of Tosa-the-Man-Mountain with the turbulence of a Wellington bomber. ‘My bruvvers cun nick the bellychoppers from Walton-on-the-Naze airfield —
‘Some people — yourself included, Tosser — will find a tiny chopper runs in the family.’
‘Shut up, Knees, and let me think.’
Benjamin reaches for the burnt offering, the lull of smoke enlivening the tube-linings of the lungs, and every hair and bronchi and cluster of mushrooms fissions with pleasure. Aha! Garden gnomes with red pointy hats and fishing lines lifting high — high above the table. Floppy hats and bells. Falling to Earth. No, Tosser is a man. Nuttin’ special.
‘Knees, why is that black man laughing at me?’
‘Oh he’s mad. He supports Arsenal.’
‘Well tell him to stop.’
‘Stop supporting Arsenal, Benjamin. You’ll go blind.’
‘The Greatest Escape Britain’s ever seen!’ raptures the Man-Mountain and rapping the table with a rock-hard fist. ‘Right. We shimmy on Sunday. Settled. Security at its slackest. And if any of you overgrown hippies grass to the Filth, you’ll be dead meat.’ Tosa-the-Man-Mountain lost before a glorious vision of candy-floss, chip-bombing seagulls and jellied-eels.
Benjamin rises on firm knees above the garden gnomes and turns his back on them. Tosser is gone. To the dogs. To the Promised Land. To Essex. And Tosser is a man. Merely a man. Not a monster.
‘Tosser, don’t forget to be taking your mamma a bone.’
The shock of deconstructed chicken pie as you stumble upon the green linoleum of the Ones rushes a right uppercut. The percussion of pots. The queue for punishment is forming.
And for a change they are near the front.
***
‘What’s going on out there?’
Above the muddy corruption of Smoggy London Town the stench of incompetent management.
Londoners accustomed to their streets being filled with the farts of masonic banksters.
‘What’s going on out there?’
For the honest folk — how Life licks up Luck from under our noses. The Lesson — how rats grasping power rapaciously abuse it.
Governor Gerbil James squirrelling a rich harvest of budget sheets ripe for the plucking, rotten cup furry at the furrow, desk calendar revolves to June 16th — Every Dog Has Its Day — the worst of dog days long turned Jeffrey Archer nightmare.
Maxim maketh the man much much the worst.
‘What’s going on out there?’
Featherstonehaugh-Major, rodent-grey man from the Home Office, ringing to complain of an infestation of rumour infecting the corridors of power of open mutiny at Her Majesty’s madhouse Springwood; and ringing to complain of a hounding from beasts of the press while attending official engagements at Royal Ascot (late this year at the behest of an Arab gentleman): the B383 report will turn into an A329 report and will attract the Home Secretary’s attention first innings Monday morning. And good day to you, sir.
The Grand-Pooh-Bear (Chief Constable Colin Dibble) ringing to complain of a Desert Storm of complaints engulfing the switchboard down at Lower Springwood Central.
Sister Gradgrind, Chief Bottlewasher of Casualty at the Royal Infirmary, complaining a deluge of prisoners lounging on trolleys and awaiting to be allotted beds needed by normal, law-abiding citizens.
The Head Pen-Pusher of the Accountants’ Mob demanding a top-slice from the Mountain of food cash.
The Beast of the Bedroom, Candida James, complaining of being over the limit on her credit card and can she have another one please.
Again the dog-’n’-bone hounds him into a premature grave.
‘Hello the name’s Aster,’ says the woman, ‘from The Obscurer.’
‘Look. I’ve issued a statement. The men had hey her minor squabble over indoor games.’
‘Games? What kind of games?’
‘Sssscrabble ... hopscotch ... hsshhick!’
‘That’s not what Sister Gradgrind says.’
‘Look, my men not seeing eye to eye is nothing t’ get your knickers in a twist —’
‘And what’s my knickers got to do with your riot? You pervert!’