The Exploits of Engelbrecht (2 page)

I’ll never forget the time I met Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, and I don’t suppose he will either. We were both staying down at the old Id’s place, Nightmare Abbey, for the Walpurgis Night Witch Shoot. It was long after breakfast when he arrived and I’d gone to bed, so we didn’t meet till supper, just before the shoot. We found we’d drawn stands next each other for the last drive of the night. Engelbrecht seemed a pleasant enough little chap—a dwarf, of course, like nearly all surrealist boxers who do most of their fighting with clocks. It was his first Witch Shoot and he was keen and, I thought, a little nervous.

I don’t know if you’ve ever shot the Nightmare coverts, but the last drive on Walpurgis Night is something special, quite a to-do. The vicar with Bell, Book and Candle and holy water spray leads the choir through the cemetery and they beat about among the gravestones shouting: “Hi cock! C’mon out of that, granny! Get crackin’ there! Only another half hour till daybreak.” Then you hear them yell: “Witch over! Mark Warlock! Wizard on the left,” and what with the screeching of the witches and the whirring of the broomsticks there’s row enough to put up the devil himself.

That drive ought by rights to make the heaviest contribution of any to the night’s bag, but the churchyard is on a cliff and the shooters’ stands are at the bottom, down by the river, so if there’s anything of a wind—and there nearly always is—the witches come rocketing over at a fearful angle, and unless there’s a moon—which there generally isn’t by then—you’re left with nothing to shoot at except a screech.

Sometimes it’s so darned infuriating the amount of game that gets away that the Id swears he’ll have searchlights mounted on top of the church tower. But of course he’s only fooling. He’d never do such an unsporting thing as that. I mean to say shooting witches by artificial light is definitely barred. I’ll never forget the row there was the night Tommy Prenderghast bribed the head keeper to set fire to Gallows Wood, which is another very tricky covert. I must say the light, as all that dry bracken flared up, was marvellous; it gave you a simply tophole shot as the witches came over silhouetted black against the red glow. I blazed away with the rest, but there was barely time to get in a left and right before the old Id came cursing and swearing along the line, telling us the shoot was off and we were to go straight home. He sacked his head keeper on the spot, and when we got back to the Abbey Tommy Prenderghast found his bags had all been packed and a huge black Fly was waiting to take him to the station to catch the milk train to London. I need hardly tell you he wasn’t asked there to shoot again.

For this last drive Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, and I had drawn the best stand of the lot. They call it the Island Stand. It’s a narrow strip of earth sticking up in the middle of the river, overgrown with nettles and brambles, old bedsteads and the intestines of worn-out agricultural machinery. You get to it by stepping stones. There’s a bend in the river just there, and the other side is the steep sandstone cliff or bluff on top of which is the churchyard, so the guns on the island are right out in front of the rest and get first shot at the covens as they come over. It’s the finest witch stand in England, and they say the splash as the witches plop into the water all round you is the most exciting sound in the world for a witch shooter and one he never forgets.

There’s always a goodish wait before the start of the drive, so I strolled over to Engelbrecht, to ask him how he’d been getting on.

I’d been having pretty poor sport myself. Indeed my bag was practically empty except for a little runt of a warlock, not worth stuffing, and the handle of a broomstick which I was taking home as a souvenir. Luckily I hadn’t got a bet on with anyone about the weight of our bags or I’d have had to try the Kaiser’s trick. The Kaiser, as I expect you know, came to stay with the Id’s grandfather, and they bet on their bags at the witch shoot. The old Id’s bag was the heavier by a brace of Worcestershire Warlocks, and the Kaiser, who was always a very bad loser, was absolutely livid, so much so that on the way home he shot his host’s grandmother to level things up. It wasn’t considered very sporting of him, although there was no doubt the old girl was a witch all right.

I had some difficulty in finding Engelbrecht at first, as the nettles were taller than he was. I couldn’t catch what he said as his teeth were chattering so with cold, but his loader whispered into my ear: “The little gentleman’s a guid plucked un, sir, but he’s a verra puir shot. He couldna hit a sitting wizard.”

I haven’t told you yet about these loaders, but they’re rather important. The fact is that all the loaders at a witch shoot are chaplains. They have to be, of course, in order to finish off any witches that get winged. Sometimes it’s difficult to get hold of enough of them for a big shoot, and the Id has to scour the country far and wide.

I’d never seen Engelbrecht’s loader before, but that didn’t signify anything. My own loader was a very old retired prison chaplain, so old I felt ashamed to be keeping him out of his bed, and when I got back to my stand and found he’d fallen asleep with his old head on my game bag I simply hadn’t the heart to wake him. I loaded both my guns with No. 3—silver witch shot—took a swig of holy water from my flask and stood at the ready with ears cocked, listening for the first thwack of the choir-boys’ sticks against the gravestones in the churchyard up over the sandstone bluff.

Presently I heard it. Then came the first screech, followed by another and another and another. I yelled to Engelbrecht to get ready and put my gun up to my shoulder. There was no light to speak of and I missed with both barrels as the first coven went over. I tried a snap shot at something that whizzed by, and missed again.

Then suddenly the moon broke through the clouds for a moment and I managed to get a shot at a big witch who came rocketing over very high. There was a terrific double explosion on my right which sounded as if Engelbrecht had loosed both barrels at once. Maybe it was poaching a bit, but I liked his keenness. Then silence for a second. Then I heard a whirring, screeching noise like a power-dive, and caught a glimpse of a huge black figure spinning down, broomstick hopelessly out of control. And then there was an almighty splash just in front of Engelbrecht’s stand.

I distinctly remember feeling rather relieved that the witch had fallen nearer Engelbrecht than me because I should have had to send my poor old loader into the river after her.

I started to run over to Engelbrecht, but an iron bedstead caught me by the foot, and after a nasty tussle threw me heavily into a bramble bush. I lay there with my ankle hurting like the devil, unable to move. I could hear a confused muttering coming from my right. “For heaven’s sake send your loader in after her,” I shouted to Engelbrecht. “What the hell’s he waiting for? We don’t want her to float down stream and have someone else claim her. Besides, she may only be winged.”

There was more muttering. Then Engelbrecht shouted back: “He refuses. Says he’s unfrocked. An unfrocked college chaplain…!”

Well, of course, that did put rather a different complexion on things. An unfrocked chaplain is no more qualified to retrieve a witch than you or me. I shouted back to Engelbrecht telling him I’d broken my ankle and couldn’t move, and he was to come over and wake my loader. But he couldn’t have heard me, because the next moment there was a loud splash and I heard the unfrocked chaplain cry out: “Lord have mercy on us! The little gentleman’s gone in after her!” And as I lay helpless on my back in the bramble bush I took off my hat to Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, the pluckiest dwarf I ever knew, and the boldest lay witch-retriever since Beowulf went into the Mere after Grendel’s mother.

What happened after that was just what I’d feared. I’ll spare you the unfrocked chaplain’s hysterical running commentary by which I was able to follow the course of the struggle. The witch, it appears, was hardly winged at all. Our flak had merely made her lose control of her broomstick and drop it in midstream. When Engelbrecht swam up to her she’d just come up from diving for the stick and had it in her mouth. She caught Engelbrecht by the scruff of the neck with one claw, hauled him on to the bank, and clouted him with her broomstick. Then she popped him into his own game bag, straddled her broomstick, which was fairly dry by now, and took off flying low upstream away from the guns. It all happened before you could say Jack Ratcatcher.

Well, I said to myself that’s the last we shall see of Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, and I proceeded to give that unfrocked college chaplain the telling off of his life.

They carried me back to Nightmare Abbey on a hurdle. I had to put up with a good deal of chaff, and Charlie Wapentake kept on asking how much witchie had bribed me to let her make away with Engelbrecht.

But lo and behold, that evening as I lay in bed I heard a great cheer, and a few minutes later who should walk into my room but little Engelbrecht, covered in filth but looking quite chirpy. It seems he’d been too heavy for the witch; he could hear her cursing like one o’clock, complaining of his weight all the time. Apparently if they don’t make their landing field before dawn they get fined. So after a bit she let him drop and he landed soft but smelly in a farmyard fifteen miles away.

Altogether, Engelbrecht said, it was the narrowest squeak he’d ever had, with the possible exception of his famous fight with a Grandfather Clock. But that is another story.

This is the story of the greatest fight in the career of Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, champion of all Time.

Engelbrecht hasn’t been in the game very long and his rise has been sensationally quick. He’s licked to within an inch of its life the Town Hall Clock at Wolverhampton, a deuced ugly customer whom surrealist sportsmen in the Midlands have backed heavily, and on his South Coast Tour he’s fought all the weighing machines to a standstill, knocked out Try Your Grips and Test Your Strengths by the score, and left the piers from Southend to Bournemouth a shambles of springs and cog-wheels, battered brasswork and twisted remains of What the Butler Saw.

His is quite an impressive record but, as some of the surrealist fancy remark, it’s a short one for a champion, and—as the sagacious Tommy Prenderghast points out—it doesn’t include nearly enough first-class clocks. After all, most of these automatic machines are terribly raw. They stand wide open and sling over haymakers. They’ve no science at all. True the Wolverhampton scrap is something to go by, but there are ugly rumours that Engelbrecht’s manager, Lizard Bayliss, slipped that Clock a couple of hundred hours to lie down.

However, there’s a shortage of chopping blocks this season, and when Engelbrecht applies for a championship fight against a recognized opponent the committee of the Surrealist Sporting Club decide to let him have his fling.

You hear gossip of some fast work behind the scenes. Tommy Prenderghast and some of the boys have got something up their sleeves and plan to rake in a packet laying odds against Engelbrecht. It looks as if they’re on to a good thing, too, because the Grandfather Clock, which the Committee nominates as official Champion and Engelbrecht’s opponent, is something really special. He comes originally, I believe, from a big country house in East Anglia. His case is made of thick black bog-oak and he stands every inch of ten feet high. Everything about him is of the strongest and stoutest. In addition to all the usual organs, hands, weights, pendulum, he’s got various accessories on top of his dial such as a Dance of the Hours and Death with a Scythe—a damned sharp one, too. And when he strikes, well, my God, you think it’s the voice of Doom itself.

You only need to take half a look at him to see he’s as cunning as they come. On top of which he’s been trained to a hair-spring by Tommy Prenderghast and Chippy de Zoete, a former champion, and what those two don’t know about the game wouldn’t fill a watch wheel’s tooth.

Engelbrecht sends Lizard Bayliss down to Grandfather Clock’s training quarters and he comes back very depressed. “Don’t think me defeatist, kiddo,” he says, “but you don’t stand a dog’s dance. They only let me see the old boy do a bit of shadow boxing but that was enough. It’ll be murder.”

“What’d he take to lie down?” Engelbrecht asks.

“Nothing less than a century and we couldn’t raise that between us, not if we was to live in training the rest of our lives. If I was you, kiddo, I’d turn it in. Lay everything you got against yourself and lie down snug before he clocks you to death.”

“I’ll not do that,” says Engelbrecht. “If I can’t frame, I fight. Never let it be said that I quit.”

“You’ll quit all right, kiddo. In a hearse.”

Comes the fight which, like all surrealist championships, is held at the Dreamland Arena round behind the gasworks, a vast desert of cinders and coal dust with an occasional oasis of nettles and burdock between two parallel canals that don’t even meet at infinity.

Engelbrecht as challenger has to be first in the ring and as he and the faithful Lizard Bayliss make their way through the crowd there is a dread chorus of alarm clocks, and a derisive yell of: “You couldn’t even box the compass!” This last is a little piece of psychological warfare on the part of Chippy de Zoete who doesn’t believe in leaving anything to chance and has hired a claque to undermine Engelbrecht’s morale. Lizard Bayliss blows a mournful raspberry back and helps his man up the ladder into the ring, which is the top of an old gasometer. Then they settle down in their corner to wait.

And how they wait. At last Lizard Bayliss complains to the committee of the Surrealist Sporting Club that if they have to wait much longer, Engelbrecht will be too old to fight. But soon after the New Year there’s a stir in the crowd along the canal side and Grandfather Clock and his gang are seen gliding along towards the ring in a barge. There is a roar of cheering from the crowd and the band strikes up
The Black Waltz
followed by
The Clockfighter’s Lament For His Lost Youth.

Grandfather Clock is hoisted into his corner and he stands there during the preliminaries while they pull the gloves on his hands, wearing his dressing gown of cobwebs, looking a regular champion every minute of him. And when they hand him good-luck telegrams from Big Ben, the Greenwich Observatory chronometer and the BBC Time Pips, he strikes thirteen and breaks into the Whittington Chimes.

But over in Engelbrecht’s corner Lizard Bayliss is in despair. “The whole set up is against us, kiddo,” he says. “Every protest is overruled. They won’t even let me look inside his works. And who do you think you’ve got for ref? Dreamy Dan!”

“What! That schizophrenic tramp!” says Engelbrecht. “Why, he’d sell his grandmother for five minutes! Never mind, Lizard. I’ll go down fighting. Fix me my spring heel shoes and I’ll try and land one on his dial as soon as the bell goes.”

Dreamy Dan says “Seconds Out.” Chippy de Zoete whips off the cobweb dressing gown and just as the bell goes Tommy Prenderghast gives Grandfather Clock a shove that sends him gliding out of his corner sideways along the ropes. He’s got a nice classic stance, hour hand well forward, minute hand guarding his face. They’ve mounted him on castors with ball bearings, and his footwork is as neat as a flea’s.

“Time,” says Dreamy Dan, late as usual, and all that huge arena is one vast hush except for the quick breathing of little Engelbrecht, three foot eleven in his spring heel shoes, and the steady tick tock, tick tock, tick tock—with a nasty emphasis on the tock—of his giant opponent, ten feet of black bog-oak and brass, coffin-lead and hangman’s rope.

Engelbrecht gathers himself together, leaps up high in the air, comes down heavily on his spring heels, then bounds like a rubber ball straight for Grandfather Clock’s dial. But Grandfather Clock sidesteps light as a kitten and Engelbrecht sails harmlessly past his dial and falls flat on his face in the middle of the ring.

There’s a roar from Tommy Prenderghast of “First blood to Grandfather Clock,” and an answering yell from Lizard Bayliss, who claims it’s a slip, not a knock-down. They wake up Dreamy Dan and he awards the point to Grandfather Clock who, meanwhile, is standing over the prostrate Engelbrecht trying to drop his weights on him. But Engelbrecht comes to just in time, rolls over to one side and scuttles away to safety.

So ends the first round. Grandfather Clock sidles back to his corner with a self-satisfied smirk on his dial. But Lizard Bayliss is more pessimistic than ever and as he flaps the towel, he says: “I suppose you know you’ve started going grey, kiddo?”

Soon after the start of the second round Engelbrecht tries another spring but Grandfather Clock smacks him down in midair with his minute hand. Then the door in his front opens and he lets drive with his pendulum. Wham! It catches Engelbrecht at six o’clock precisely and sends him spinning out of the ring into the canal. He swims ashore and climbs back in time to take the most fearful dose of punishment ever handed out in the annals of the surrealist ring. Grandfather Clock gives him everything he’s got; Hour Hand, Minute Hand, Second Hand, Pendulum, both Weights, the Dance of the Hours and Death’s Scythe. When at last Dreamy Dan falls asleep on the bell, Engelbrecht is in a very poor way indeed. And all over the town clocks start striking and alarms jangling in celebration of their champion’s prowess.

“He ain’t half clockin’ you, kiddo,” says Lizard Bayliss. “Do you know your hair’s gone quite white?”

But in round three Engelbrecht makes a surprise come-back. Putting everything he’s got left into one mighty spring, he lands right on top of Grandfather Clock’s works, bores in close to his dial and tries to put his hands back. Before he knows what time it is Grandfather Clock’s hands are forced back to midnight last Tuesday and he starts to strike. Dreamy Dan, prompted by Chippy de Zoete, invents a new rule and says: “Engelbrecht! You must come down off there and stand back while your opponent strikes the hour.”

By now the gameness of this dwarf on springs has caught the fancy of the fickle surrealist crowd and they are yelling to him to stay up there and never mind the referee, but Engelbrecht loses his hold and drops from the dial.

After that, for the next six rounds, it’s just plain murder all the way. Engelbrecht has shot his bolt and has to fight on the defensive. When he’s not being whammed into the middle of next week by the pendulum he’s back-pedalling to try and escape straight lefts from the minute hand and right hooks from the hour hand. Grandfather Clock goes after him round and round the ring, slap, bang, wham, clang, striking and chiming time out of mind. How Engelbrecht avoids the k.o. nobody will ever know. Perhaps it’s the vivifying effect of all those dips in the canal. Anyway, he just manages to keep on his feet.

At the end of the ninth round the gang are just a tiny bit worried. It’s in the bag, of course. Their Clock is way ahead on points and fresh as the dawn, but they’ve counted on a knockout long before this. Still, the last round in a surrealist championship can last as long as the winning side likes, so they look fairly cheerful as they go into a huddle over some grand strategy.

Not so Lizard Bayliss, who is begging Engelbrecht to turn it in while he’s still got a few days left. “If you could see yourself, kiddo,” he says. “You’re all shrivelled up. You look a hundred.”

Just then one of the oldest of all the old-timers of the Surrealist Sporting Club hobbles over and plucks Lizard by the sleeve. “I’ve got a tip for you,” he says. “It’s a chance in a million but it might come off. Tell your man…” And he whispers into Lizard’s ear. Lizard nods and whispers it to Engelbrecht. And, whatever it is, it seems to filter through the state of dotage that Engelbrecht is now in, for he nods his trembling head.

They come out for the last round and pretty soon Grandfather Clock gets Engelbrecht tied up against the ropes and starts measuring him for the k.o. The door in his front opens and the weights and pendulum come out for the
coup de grace
when suddenly, Engelbrecht darts forward, dodges between the weights, jumps inside the clock case and slams the door to after him. The next moment a convulsive tremor passes over Grandfather Clock’s giant frame, an expression of anguish crosses his dial, and he starts striking and chiming like fury, but the tone doesn’t sound like his ordinary tone. It sounds much more like hiccoughs.

Engelbrecht isn’t in there long but when he pops out he looks fifty years younger, and damme if he isn’t brandishing Grandfather Clock’s pendulum and weights above his head. This, of course, means that Grandfather Clock’s works are running wild, lost control. His hands chase each other round his dial and he ticks and strikes so fast it’s like a stick being drawn along railings.

Chippy de Zoete and Tommy Prenderghast are afraid he’ll run down and they chase after him, trying to wind him up and fit him with a new pendulum and weights, but Engelbrecht and Lizard Bayliss intercept and they’re all four milling round Grandfather Clock, when suddenly there is a terrible death-rattle, followed by a howl from Lizard Bayliss: “You’ve got him, kiddo! He’s stopped, I tell you! He’s stopped! The fight’s yours!” And Grandfather Clock, shoved this way and that as they mill round him, starts to totter and heel over. Then down he comes with a frightful jangling crash and Engelbrecht squats on his face and wrenches off his hands. The crowd goes wild and the sun turns black and all over the place clocks stop and time stands still.