Bigot Hall (12 page)

In the first three minutes of the universe, a hyperconcentrated dot of matter and energy exploded, space unfurled to accommodate the supercondensing gasses, and Uncle Burst’s ego broke away from the body of creation, expanding at an unimaginable rate. This much has been verified, but after months of gloomy silence at the dinner table, Burst tore off his bib and roared in no uncertain terms that he devoted every ounce of his strength to keeping ‘these features of mine’ on the front of his head. He stated that his face was the first thing to have emerged from Earths primordial soup, and said he would reproduce the event in a giant flask. This comprehensive outburst halted the meal, Snapper’s jaws frozen in the act of closing upon a wren. As we had always predicted, Burst had flipped from his rocker.

Snap surged to his feet. ‘You’re meddling with nature you bloody fool - look what can happen!’ And he pointed at the Verger.

I think Snap was eager to divert attention from himself at this time as everyone had started joking about his spring-loaded ribcage. We all knew he spent whole days laying in the woodland undergrowth, malevolent anticipation flushing his face as he waited for someone to step on him. The sarcasm started when a hedgehog blundered across Snapper’s belly and Snapper returned to the Hall complaining warily of a sudden gallstone. Leap had once had a gallstone like a meteorite and recognised Snap’s reluctance to compare notes for the shame it was. ‘I think you’ll find there’s one less hedgehog snouting through the bracken tonight,’ he announced, looking sharply at Snapper.

So when Burst began building a Urey reaction vessel, Snap was scornful and relieved. The vessel contained hydrogen, ammonia, methane, water and hydrogen sulphide - the stuff of life awaiting a spark of electricity. This spark was arced through the vessel at one-second intervals and Burst set up a time-lapse camera to shoot at the same rate. The atmosphere in the flask reproduced that of pre-biological Earth and when the lightning-wire flashed the entire mistake would be recreated in miniature.

We should have known it would be a turbulent event when Burst started muttering ‘Stand clear’ over and again from dawn till night. The day of the experiment we stood on the landing outside of Burst’s room, our features illuminated by the strobing light. The ticking electrode was the only sound until a blazing explosion blew Burst through the door in a litter of fragments.

‘Is he alright?’ asked Father.

‘Only by the broadest definition,’ frowned Leap.

Burst was in shock, his eyes locked upward in their sockets, eyelids flickering. The room was filled with smoke and the gas flask was utterly annihilated. ‘What did he see?’ gasped Leap, convinced that Burst’s stupor was the result of having witnessed an image which would have stunned a hardy bull. He salvaged the dented camera with a strangled cry.

The next day we gathered to watch the time-lapse footage. Burst was propped among us like a length of timber. Leap portrayed concern and stated that a second viewing of the horrors in the flask would release Burst from his catatonic state. We were all curious, knowing that Burst’s facial claim was a real possibility. He had long since established that the lines on his right palm precisely reproduced the impact patterns on the lunar surface. But why should confirmation of his latest theory blaze him into shock? Was it the first time he had seen his own face?

On the screen we saw a flickering downview of the flask, in which steam appeared to swirl and mass. It soon became dense and brown, streaking the flask walls with nucleic acid tar. A dark protein sludge bloomed at the base of the vessel, changing colour rapidly. The rich mud congealed, heaving, and unfurled from the centre. A face emerged like a plastercast from a vat. It was Snapper’s. The film ended abruptly.

As the lights went up, Snapper was triumphant. ‘Ha, ha, ha - there you go, Burst. It takes a
real
man to be the first carbon-based life form out of the primal matrix.’

The rest of us were stunned and, to my knowledge, Burst never spoke or moved again.

Unable to leave well enough alone, Leap raided Burst’s notes. The only related items he found were a drawing of the flask setup, a belligerent account of Burst’s emergence from the primordial stew and a scrawled speculation that the carbonised freeze-impression of that event could be found on the crust of a solar satellite. This was years before I saw the Viking Probe photographs of what appeared to be a giant face on the surface of Mars. This face, too, was unmistakably Snapper’s.

‘We all have a cage of bone around our heart,’ said Adrienne. ‘But you take the biscuit. Anyone with enough sense to fill a bird’s ear would tell you this is the spice.’ She was referring to the enfolded sunny glade of pollen and opening century flowers, surrounded by hedge-doors and a vale of entrances and dripping gardens which riddled into mazes so distant in all directions that the landscape streaked into mist. The pearl-blue sky showed no sign of abating. The ground sat still, covered in grass. Blown-out watches lay around like shells of snails. Adrienne was drowsing, gold mothdust in her hair - scratch her surface and you’d glimpse heaven.

As we lay in the blurcolour and the shade of leaves, I thought of mossy graveyards and forgotten patients. ‘You’re not angry at me are you?’

‘Ofcourse not - what an idea. You worry too much.’

‘I worry subject to requirements,’ I said. ‘This world’s about to spring like a steel trap.’

‘No it isn’t,’ she said sleepily. ‘I’ll keep it open ...’

She was drifting off. I felt cheated - we had set up a shared dream to be together and now she was falling asleep inside it. Could she have another lucid dream inside this one? How much dreamtime could she cram in this way, like the layers of a Russian doll? I felt excluded, and stood, storming off through an arched topiary door.

Slowing away down a hedgepath of crimson litterleaves, I thought about the moon and how any emotion there had to be imported. I watched corrosive gushes furnacing in the sky and thought of skulls tumbling like popcorn. I thought of unsuccessfully killed fence wood growing again. I thought of the skeletons of angels. I thought of giant bonsai. And that people should dream in many ways or one dream would sterilise the world.

Around a corner was a marble bench with an inscription on the backrest: ‘We live in an infinitely untidy universe.’ I sat down and, finding the seat refreshingly cool in the close heat, I recalled a poem of Adrienne’s:

A beggar sat on a marble bench

And bit off the head of a dead, raw tench;

A bigot sat on a marble bench

And bit off the head of a whippet.

The trees hushed in a breeze. Chuckling fondly, I remembered when I was younger and me and Billy Verlag played with marbles golden as the molecules of lions.

I awoke with a start. I was in the hothouse, on a chair. The glass was blurred with condensation. Infuriated that I’d popped out of the dream - and was now two dream layers away from Adrienne - I bounded up and stormed out. ‘Living myself down to their level,’ I snarled aloud as I crossed the empty courtyard. ‘Hello?’

The house seemed deserted. Some of the windows were open. Everything seemed real enough. The detailing on the walls remained the same when I looked away and back again. I flipped through a book, reading and rereading certain sentences. They never altered, but what did this prove? For some time now I had been accurately transcribing reams of phantom text.

In tutoring me in the lucid arts Adrienne had surprised me by stating that in the last ditch a practitioner may indeed pinch himself to determine whether he is dreaming or awake. I had thought it amusing that we gauge our presence in the world by the ability to suffer. Toying with the idea of using other people’s pain as a gauge I had kneed Snapper in the face during a particularly nightmarish conversation, accomplishing nothing but my own entertainment.

Now here I was in the Hall without even an uncle to strike. I pinched myself on the arm. Felt a twinge which may have been a mere recollection. Sat in the quiet kitchen, I punched myself in the face. Terrible face-ache, some blood, but it seemed such a strange, dreamlike thing to do. I hammered a nail through my hand. I smashed my head through a sheet of glass. I slashed my wrists with a bolt cutter. I smiled my throat with a circular saw. I painted the wall behind me with a level action shotgun. I unravelled my intestines like a bog roll. Sheer agony all of it, but I wasn’t convinced. I sat listlessly sorting a duodenum which gleamed like porcelain. Clearly I should be dead by now, or at least unconscious. Everything was reversed. Emotional pain is the stuff of real life as there’s no blackout point. This was surely a dream. The kitchen resembled an abattoir.

Then Adrienne entered, stared in utter shock, walked unsteadily to the table and sat down as though medicated. ‘Laughing boy,’ she said. ‘Why such a loss of blood?’

A loud explosion went off in what was left of my ears. ‘Are you saying this is real?’ I demanded aghast, shaking a ribbon of gut.

‘Oh, laugher,’ she said mournfully.

‘It’s a shrieking nightmare,’ I gasped, surveying the gore.

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne. ‘You haven’t woken up. You fell asleep inside the dream, like I did - you followed me. This is a replica of the Hall where I go to be alone.’

I saw the full horror of what I’d done. ‘I’m really sorry, Adrienne,’ I said, replacing my spaghetti-like innards. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude. You’re not angry at me are you?’

Adrienne stood, reached over, and slapped me so hard I woke up on the marble bench, the heavy purr of bumble bees thrumming the air. I stood and walked down the hedgelined path to the sunny clearing, where Adrienne stood waiting. She tenderly pushed the fringe from my eyes, then slapped me so hard I awoke in bed.

It was dark, rain was hammering the windows amid low grumbling thunder.

The door opened quietly and Adrienne padded in, squirming in under the covers. ‘It’s cold,’ she said and softly stroked my cheek. ‘Your poor face.’

‘Are we awake now?’

She made the same tilted, listening expression she made when cutting her own hair. ‘Yes,’ she concluded. ‘Let’s not fight again, laughing boy. Look how much time we’ve wasted.’ She showed me the bedside clock. We had been asleep nearly two minutes.

New arrivals at the Hall were a cause of excitement and concern and this was never more apparent than the day we were joined by Mr Mandible, who sat in Father’s study like a principled man.

‘You were referred to me by Roger Lang,’ said Father. ‘What can you say to redeem yourself?’

‘I would like a room here.’

‘You and a million others. How old are you Mr Mandible?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘Correct. Do you heal quickly?’

‘In a flash. Unless the wound is open, as with a triangular chunk-blade.’

‘Or a tubular coral injury,’ suggested Father, ‘sustained off the Hawaiian islands.’

‘Precisely.’

‘I should tell you that the meals here are acutely poisonous.’

‘I intend to grow cress on the mantelpiece and pretend to be happier than I am.’

‘Excellent. This all seems to be in order.’ Father regarded an action shot of Mr Mandible booting a terrier off a cliff. ‘You understand that the ground floor of the west wing is crawling with nuns?’

‘This won’t be a problem.’

‘And that my mother-in-law is made of metamorphic rock.’

‘That, with all due respect, is not my concern.’

‘Well answered.’ Father held out a hand. ‘And welcome aboard sir. I think you’ll find our little nation a fertile chaos of throbbing trash.’

‘Indeed sir,’ said the new arrival, with a firm and solemn handshake.

An hour later, Snapper burst into the study. ‘Leap’s just told me you accepted a new lodger!’ He was startled and alarmed. ‘Who is he?’

‘Strap-hanger. Plug-ugly. Armed to the nines. Ask no questions. Last resort.’

‘Is he suitable?’

‘I sat here blathering the worst sort of nonsense and he never clanged an eyelid. Shook my whole arm like a man of honour. He’ll be up in his room now, buggering a rayfish.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Snapper, shuffling and eager to begin, ‘I should go and give him the glad hand.’

Father returned to his drawingboard. ‘See that you do.’

Snapper entered Mandible’s room and Mandible, about to flip the catch on his travel case, did not smile. ‘Not interrupting anything,’ Snapper told him. ‘Thought I’d drop by to welcome you into the fold. You’ll find this a pleasant home if you keep your depravities to yourself. That hole over there is for the snake, so keep it clear. The corners of the house are all on the inside. Designed to leach your integrity as you sleep. Madness moves upon us with hardly the snapping of a twig.’ Snapper sat bouncing onto the bed, looking around. ‘This was my room before my brother - who incidentally likes to eat human flesh - told me to live in that treehouse out there.’ He regarded Mandible, awaiting a response. ‘So how do you make a living, Mandible?’

‘I’m in the brain trade.’

Snapper stood and departed with a slam.

In the study, Snapper slavered a substance resembling guacamole. ‘Said he was in the brain trade. The
brain trade
,’ he emphasised. ‘In god’s name make a remark to comfort me, brother.’

‘Perhaps he was lying.’

‘If that was the lie he selected what pit of hell could he be
concealing
? You’ve picked a spooky one there, brother. He’ll trundle in at night and suck out your supper with a pipe and bellows.’

In the afternoon, Mr Mandible slowly entered the study to find Father alone at his desk. ‘I should like,’ he stated, ‘to take the opportunity to explain a certain remark at which your brother was perhaps disconcerted. Before matters become unnecessarily oppressive.’

‘Oppressive,’ said Father, cautiously.

Mr Mandible sat down opposite the desk. ‘In the likelihood that you will implore my assistance shortly in the extermination of certain vermin, I have with me the instruments of my calling.’ He patted the shell-shaped leather case on his lap. ‘You see, what you perhaps blithely refer to, through the cigar smoke and laughter of after-dinner conversation, as the human brain, is not by nature an ingredient of the human organism. The brain is a parasitic sea-sponge, brimming and sinister, wielding our bodies like a crane.’

‘A parasite.’

‘You mock my trade by pretending otherwise. More things in heaven and earth sir.’

‘I should say so.’

‘And these particular things,’ stated Mandible, ‘exist at my expense - and yours. Who needs a forebrain?’

‘Ah - who indeed?’ said Father, gripping his chair as though in a runaway sidecar.

‘Insidious sir. Threading through the host tissue. Staked to the brainpan like a hiking tent. The man who realises all this will feel a strong urge to lance his own head like a boil. Resist sir. Or to cop it under a skidding lorry. Resist, resist. It is not impossible to lead a normal life.’

‘An interesting concept.’

‘Corruption sir. Pollution. How to discern between our thoughts and theirs? Do I slap my face -
uh
- by my own volition? It’s a sad day for one and all when a man can’t take credit for slapping his own profile. And all because of these bloody sea animals.’

‘How do these tiresome brains of yours move inland?’

‘Tortoises sir. Sold commercially. Thick protective shell, ideal cavity size, slow gait unlikely to jolt the cargo.’

‘A skullcase on legs eh?’ said Father thoughtfully, standing. ‘Pardon me a moment will you?’

Father was in the driveway, frantically loading tortoises into the jeep. He pulled away in a spray of gravel as Mr Mandible ran out of the house, aiming a customised harpoon gun.

Near the village, Father threw himself into a callbox and dialled, gasping. ‘Roger you bastard?’ he bellowed down the phone. ‘Mandible. Seemed normal. Tipped his hand. Madman. What are you going to do about it?’

‘Me, old fellow?’ laughed Roger Lang affably, his voice crackling and distant. ‘He’s no friend of mine. Staggered out of an abattoir during demolition. Bothered me. Gave him your address.’

‘Well he’s fallen just short of invoking the devil.’

‘Not surprised, old man - coals to Newcastle.’

‘My reading of the situation is this – you’re a shithead who ought to be posted a burning rag. This extraordinary admission of yours to not even know the man makes everything crystal clear. He was barely in the door before launching into a dismal regatta of barbarity and fear. Insisted that tortoises contain brains.’

‘But ofcourse they do old fellow.’

‘Not that kind of brain you idiot. The kind that comes out of the sea and takes control.’

Lang was feeble with laughter as Father dropped the receiver and bolted from the callbox - Mr Mandible was fast approaching on a bicycle. The car wouldn’t start - Father started sprinting across an adjoining field, holding a carpetbag.

For reasons I refuse to understand, most of the villagers had come to believe that the Hall was an asylum. Seeing this as his trump card, Father entered the village police station and put the carpetbag on the counter. ‘This bag,’ he gasped. ‘Full of tortoises. See for yourself. Chap just escaped from the Hall. Irrational behaviour. Believes they’re related.’

The officer on duty peered into the bag. ‘Perhaps they are,’ he said.

‘Not the tortoises you moron,’ shouted Father. ‘The facts.’

The church bell began to ring and Father ran out to see that Mr Mandible was clinging to the steeple, yelling down at a gathering crowd. ‘Listen to me – don’t deceive yourselves,’ he was shrieking emphatically. ‘We’re prawns in their game - you don’t know what you’re up against. Only one life to lead and frankly you’ve made a balls of it. We’re heading for a catastrophe you fools - a cataclysm from which nothing fiercer than a chicken will step away. It’ll be as much fun as being sawn out of a Volvo and as interesting to watch as Walter Brennan. You’re in denial, the lot of you.’

Gazing up, the police officer gave a scornful snort. ‘Not me,’ he said.

‘You soppy bastards,’ Mr Mandible was bellowing. ‘More noisy than efficient. Hamfisted and bleating. Mean-spirited. Imperilling everything. I draw no distinctions. You’ll end up as charcoal statues. Baked to perfection. Blown to bits. Revenge. One in the face for liberty. I’m incredible, stunning, unbelievable. And I’ve been that way for donkeys’ years.’

The policeman raised a megaphone. ‘Had a bump on the old noggin eh Mandible?’

‘I’m past caring,’ yelled Mr Mandible. ‘I’ve the lion’s share. I’m laughing. Your lies are dense enough to fluoresce in UV light.’

‘As delirium goes,’ said an onlooker, ‘it’s classy.’

‘Makes it look so easy,’ said another.

‘Mutant in a belltower,’ said a third, wistful and misty-eyed.

At that point it began to rain and the crowd dispersed. The officer left, saying ‘It’s all yours, doc’ to Father as he gave him the megaphone.

‘Er ...’ said Father through a squeal of electrical feedback.

Huge drops of rain were flying from Mandible’s face and hair. He sputtered and frowned, clinging to the steeple.

‘Er ... Mandible.’

Mandible strained his face around. ‘What now?’

‘You may not be suited to the Hall after all.’

‘You ... you said I could stay. There are the legal aspects to consider. A spoken agreement is technically binding.’

‘I ... I know it is, Mandible, but ... I feel I’ve been misled. This brain business, it won’t do - not when it involves harpooning tortoises and so on.’

‘You didn’t tell me,’ shouted Mandible over his shoulder, slipping and clutching at the roof.

‘It’s a house rule, Mandible - one I felt didn’t need spelling out. My mistake old fellow, but there it is. No harpooning of anything smaller than a barn.’

‘And Mr Burst’s ego?’ said Mandible, his face pressed against the streaming tiles.

‘An exception - all egos an exception. Is it agreed?’

‘No turbot,’ shouted Mandible.

‘If you insist, old boy. Do we have an understanding?’

Mandible scrabbled for a handhold. ‘Very well,’ he said, and slipped, crashing through the roof of a horsebox - a gelding burst through the doors and galloped away with a confused Mandible on its back. A week later he was found convulsing in a disused sty and by that time Father had organised a course of tablets - the same medication, incidentally, that Uncle Snap took for his anger. In order to keep track of the Hall tortoises, Mr Mandible devised a pair of heat-sensitive goggles which he wore twenty-four hours a day. And since tortoises are cold-blooded and undetectable by these means, the device was a comfort to Mandible even when one was crawling across his face.