The Midden

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘Same every place, Maxie, same every place,’ said the Chief Constable, adapting to the argot. ‘I think I’ll wait for the mixed grill. Fresh, is it?’

  Maxie combined a nod with a shrug by way of a disclaimer. ‘Well, Mr Cope, what can I say? I provide fresh but what comes in I have to take pot luck. Pay top rates too.’

  ‘Mixed grill it is,’ said Sir Arnold, and sat back to watch the floor show. It was, to say the least, entirely appropriate for the setting. Two girls danced rather awkwardly on an oil-covered water-bed before wrestling with one another’s panties and finally going in for a prolonged bout of peculiar kissing.

  The Chief Constable finished his whisky and ordered another. ‘Make it a Spanish, Maxie,’ he said, ‘and what’s with this starter? It’s a long time coming.’

  ‘Hasn’t arrived yet,’ Maxie told him.

  ‘So what do I do while I wait?’

  ‘You could always have a bit of massage maybe.’

  ‘I’m surprised at you, Maxie. You know me. I don’t do none of that.’

  Again Mr Schryburg nodded and shrugged. ‘Me neither,’ he said, ‘me neither. You wouldn’t believe it but I am a believer always in family values. Sure, you laugh but it is true. Like the Great Lady said, “What we need is family values like the Victorians.” And she was right. You know, Mr Cope, she should have toughed it out. Some great lady. I drink to her. The Iron Maiden.’

  The Chief Constable raised his glass and drank. He felt rather embarrassed whenever Mr Schryburg talked like that. Like someone farting in church. It was inappropriate and besides he wasn’t at all sure about the Iron Maiden bit. While he waited he tapped the channel controller on the multiple TV screens. Nothing happening in Diner 1. In Diner 3 a thin and rather nervous individual was helping himself to neat Polish vodka. Sir Arnold shook his head disapprovingly. It was no help doing that. All the same he stayed with Diner 3. The fellow had taken his trousers off and had folded them neatly beside his shirt. The Chief Constable switched on the video recorder. He had recognized Fred Phylleps, the Tory party campaign manager for South Twixt and also an influential figure as the transport manager at Intergrowth Chemicals. In fact Sir Arnold had had it on good authority that F.F., as Fred Phylleps was known to his friends, had been the bagman in a pay-off to someone who knew a little too much about the financial affairs of a certain person’s close relative. No names, no packdrill. It would be a good thing to add F.F. to his little collection of videoed notables, though frankly Sir Arnold wasn’t impressed by his choice of dishes. Thirty-five-year-old-playing-teenybopper did nothing for him, and he had recently gone clean off leather. Still, F.F. might yet come in handy by way of protection.

  Presently, when he had tried several other Diners, the Chief Constable turned back to his own needs. He hadn’t come here for a meal. He needed information. ‘You haven’t got many customers for a Monday night,’ he said when Maxie brought his third whisky.

  ‘Comes and goes. Mondays. Sometimes there’s a big rush on like when the wives are away or we get a convention. And of course the regulars come in the afternoon though we do have some in the morning. Come with their fishing rods mainly. Mornings is surprisingly good.’

  ‘I suppose they must be,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘By the way, do you have many bondage merchants?’

  ‘Try the Dungeon,’ said Maxie and leant across to press a button marked D. Sir Arnold found himself staring at a room containing what looked like a surgical table with straps, a dentist’s chair and, most sinisterly, a small gallows with a hangman’s noose. On the walls were an assortment of instruments and whips.

  ‘I like to think we got some good equipment,’ said Maxie. ‘Yeah, man, we can give them the works. We got one customer’s a medical man and he reckons all we need is a resuscitation room and we could help out with the National Health operations. What he don’t know is we’ve got a resuscitation room right through that door in the corner there. You wouldn’t believe what some people like doing to themselves. We had this old guy in one time brought his own priest for confession like and I’m meaning a kosher priest. I swear to God the guy’s got a real priest. Like he’s a Roman Catholic or something. So one of the girls has got to be dressed in nothing but a hood and these pants and an open-teat bra, all black leather. And she’s the hangman and two other girls they strap the old guy up real tight and the priest takes his confession and the last rites, you know, the works. And that’s when I know the priest is for real because he doesn’t like what he’s into one bit. Keeps sweating and crossing himself. And Ruby, she’s the hangman, puts this silk bag over the old guy’s head and then the noose on this bungy rubber and takes her time to give him his money’s worth because this is costing, with that equipment and the overheads like the gallows and all. Then she steps back and pulls the lever and the old guy goes down on the bungy. You should have seen it. Thing is we’ve got the noise right on the audio player so we don’t hear his real noise. Man, was I glad we had a top doctor in Diner 10 that night. Only time I’ve ever asked a customer to stop and come urgent. The old guy had had a seizure even before he did the drop scene. Then he’s having this fucking fit and it’s boomsadaisy and he’s on the bungy having his neck stretched and it don’t do him no good at all, jerking around and twitching like there’s no tomorrow which just about happens to be true in his case. And that bungy don’t help none either. He keeps coming up through the fucking trap again and the priest is so fucking thrown he’s off into the last rites again. And as if that isn’t bad enough, I call the ambulance fast and they rush in what’s the first thing they see? Ruby in the leather and a naked fucking doctor with a condom on trying to get the old bastard down so’s he can give him the kiss of life and he’s hacking away at the bungy rope with some scissors won’t cut and there’s this priest on his knees moaning in Latin or something. Only time I’ve seen the last rites done twice in ten minutes the same guy. You think of the outlay for a caper like that. Shit. I have to buy the ambulance guys off and give that doctor three weeks free and that ain’t all. I got to join the Catholic Church so I can confess for real and calm that fucking priest down he’s so hysterical. Yeah, sure the old guy is paying. When he comes out of intensive care which was iffy at the time and he’s in hospital seven whole weeks. After that I said we got to have our own resuscitation room. And was I lucky. We had an accident one time with the electric chair. Wasn’t no accident either. The guy was a bad one. I mean a hurter, a real mean bastard. He wants to go all the way with torture like he’s read they do in South Africa or El Salvador some place. Terminals and electric shocks and you know. The works. So he’s got Lucille in there. She’s the one does the S and M roles both. Big girl and not the sort you’d think was that way. Motherly, you know what I mean?’

  The Chief Constable did. He had a video in his safe of Lucille working the Member for East Seirsley with the butt of a bull whip with genuine pleasure. She was enjoying her work, which was more than the MP appeared to. Afterwards, when he had the gag out, he’d said as much. It was an interesting tape.

  ‘So this mean bastard has brought his own transformer,’ Maxie went on. ‘After him we screened the gear people bring but this was earlier. Gets Lucille in the chair with the straps on and the head terminal down on her and the mask he leaves off and he cranks his own machine. Both. You believe it? Lucille’s expecting to imitate when he fires but she don’t have to do no imitations. You should have seen the fucking burn marks he leaves on her. Real nice bastard. Even had the nerve to query the bill. Some guys you don’t have back. And we search bags since.’

  Sir Arnold added the Dungeon to his list of future viewings. He also came up with an important question. ‘Got any bondage freaks use the Dungeon?’ he asked.

  Again Maxie Schryburg smirked. ‘Mr Cope, have we got bondage . . . Man, we got every kind of kook you can name and some you never heard of. Had a publisher in the other day wants to shrink-wrap Pauline. “Shrink-wrap her?” I says to him. “What you mean ‘shrink-wrap’? You
gonna suffocate her.” You know what he says? Says he wants her shrink-wrapped because he wants to use her as a dump bin. There’s some things in this business I don’t understand and I been in it so many years and dump bin is something too much. Right? And I say so to Pauline. I say, “You got a guy in there wants to have you shrink-wrapped in plastic for a dump bin.” Jesus, that Pauline took off. She’s a sassy girl too. Water sports, wind surfing, husband and wife, the two-way stretch with muffins, she’s not fussy. So when she says dump bins is out, boy, they’re definitely off the menu. You think that guy takes it easy? He gets real rude and mean. So, he’s in the door, he’s a member since he’s here and I don’t want no trouble because he’s a big-time publisher from London. So I tell him he can’t have Pauline, he’ll have to take pot luck like out of house and I calls Mrs Ferrow and she says sure she’ll do it just so the guy doesn’t see her face. She don’t want to be known, though everybody I know knows her. Fine with me. Who wants to look at Mrs Ferrow’s face? Only one thing is I tell her, “This customer wants you down under.” Fine with Mrs Ferrow. Wants to know what sort of fucking animal, like a koala bear or a kangafuckingroo. Must be pissed or something. So I go back to this big guy and say which way he wants the dump? He looks at me he doesn’t understand what I’m asking. Miles of fucking cling-film he’s undone already all over the fucking floor and he doesn’t want the dump. You know what he says? He’s never heard of it like that and I believe him. Practically throws up when I tell him. Dump bins in his world are things you stack books in not Mrs Ferrow assfacing him and –’

  ‘Maxie, I don’t want to hear,’ said the Chief Constable, who knew Mrs Ferrow by sight and didn’t like to think what was coming. ‘All I want is all the names of your bondage freaks and men who drug young men. All, you understand, all the names.’

  Maxie pulled a long face. ‘Come on, Mr Cope, you know I don’t –’

  ‘I know you don’t, Maxie,’ Sir Arnold said in a conciliatory fashion, ‘that’s one of the things I like about you. And you know I never make any use of any information anyone can trace back to you. That’s good insurance for us both. So you got any information about guys who like boys out of their skulls on LSD, I want it.’

  Maxie Schryburg relaxed. ‘You want that sort of thing I can supply it easy,’ he said. ‘You want it private is fine with me. You want to be the boy, eh? Nothing easier . . .’ He stopped. The Chief Constable was turning a very nasty colour.

  ‘You just want the names, sure,’ Maxie said hurriedly, trying to make good his mistake. ‘Sure, I’ll get it now.’ And before the Chief Constable could tell him what he thought of him, he was off.

  For the rest of the evening Sir Arnold sat back and watched the mixed grill on the water-bed. But every now and then he would switch the button marked D and study the apparatus in the Dungeon with interest. He’d get Maxie to show him round it in person. Only trouble was he had never gone further than the video room he was in and he didn’t intend to now. No one was ever going to catch him on tape.

  At 11.30 he left cautiously by the covered way and drove back to Tween. He had a list of names in his pocket that might lead to the boy in his bed and he was feeling rather satisfied with himself. In fact he was thinking of having some relaxation and Glenda never went to bed before midnight. Unless he was there, of course. On the whole, he thought not. He’d had an exhausting weekend and he had to get to work in the morning.

  19

  Far away to the south Auntie Bea was doing her best to persuade Lady Vy that she must take her case to her father. ‘Darling, you must see that it is the only way you can save yourself. Arnold’s trying to blackmail you with unfavourable publicity and getting your name in the tabloids. If you get your father to act now . . .’

  ‘Oh but Bea, don’t you see Daddy would be so shocked,’ said Lady Vy, looking vaguely round the restaurant as if for support. Le Clit, decorated in a specious art deco and newly opened in a renovated garage in the Fulham Road, didn’t seem the right atmosphere in which to talk about Daddy. Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre held strong views about women like that. ‘And anyway,’ she went on, ‘even if I do tell him, what can poor Daddy do? He’s almost eighty and he hasn’t been at all well –’

  ‘Tosh,’ said Auntie Bea masterfully. ‘Your father is a very fit old man and he loves nothing better than demonstrating his power of influence. If you tell him what Arnold has been doing –’

  ‘Oh, but I couldn’t,’ said Vy. Auntie Bea’s gloved hand closed firmly on her wrist and the fingers tightened on her painfully. She looked through half tears into Bea’s eyes. ‘You’re asking too much of me.’

  ‘Suppose I said I was going to be asking so much more of you later on,’ Auntie Bea hissed softly. She moistened her lips with her tongue and Vy felt hopelessly weak. ‘And I am. You will go to your father in the morning and tell him everything. Everything, do you hear?’

  Lady Vy nodded. Her soft blue eyes had misted over. ‘Everything? About us too?’ she asked in a girlish whisper.

  The gloved fingers bit deeper into her wrist. ‘No, not about us,’ snapped Bea fiercely. ‘Of course not about us. About Arnold and the young man in your bed.’

  ‘Oh no, Bea, I couldn’t. Don’t you see Daddy would believe I’d asked him to come to bed with me. He wouldn’t believe I hadn’t. He’s never believed anything I’ve said. He thinks I’m –’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Auntie Bea hurriedly, and considered this new problem. Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre’s stated views on the place of women in the kitchen, and silent women at that, were well known. It was even rumoured that he had stopped his eldest daughter from having an abortion on the grounds that if she must behave like an elephant in musth she had better learn to live with the consequences. The fact that only male elephants got in musth was of no influence on Sir Edward’s opinion that all women were by nature driven by obscure and sinister sexual urges which had to be tamed or, better still, ignored. Lady Vy had particular reasons as well for fearing his anger.

  ‘Now, listen, darling,’ Bea went on, using her eyes to will Vy’s obedience and still grasping her wrist, ‘you must tell him straight away that Arnold put the boy there himself with the deliberate intention of involving you in his own crimes.’

  ‘But Bea, I don’t see how.’

  ‘Doesn’t it tell you anything about Arnold’s proclivities that the boy was naked and tied up in bed linen and that Arnold kept drugging him with Valium?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he could be a bit that way,’ Vy admitted. ‘He can get very violent and I’m sure he has a bit of fluff in Tween somewhere.’

  ‘But is it just a bit of fluff? What about a pretty boy?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. It’s all so confusing,’ said Lady Vy, pining for a change in the conversation. ‘I was so looking forward to going shopping for that coat at Tamara’s. Do you really think it will suit me?’

  But Auntie Bea was not to be diverted by the siren calls of very expensive dressmakers in Davies Street. She was about to come up with the trump card. ‘What you don’t seem to realize is that the media are already onto Arnold,’ she said. ‘They’ve got the scent of a major scandal, much more serious than the last one, and you have to act before it breaks and you are dragged in along with Arnold and the others.’

  ‘What new scandal? What’s it about? You’ve got to tell me.’

  ‘Only if you promise to go and see your father in the morning. Promise?’

  For a moment Lady Vy hesitated, but the gin and the need to know were too much for her. ‘Promise,’ she said but Auntie Bea still refused to tell her.

  ‘You must go and tell him everything you know about Arnold. You’ve got to do it to save yourself. Your father will know what to do.’ Auntie Bea signalled for the bill.

  They went back to Bea’s flat by taxi. ‘Now you’re going to have to sleep on your own tonight,’ Auntie Bea said. ‘I want you to think carefully what you’re going to say tomorrow and you’re going to tell me in the morning.’


  And with a light kiss she was gone. Lady Vy went to bed with a sigh. She didn’t like to have to think about nasty things. And going to see Daddy was a very nasty thing indeed.

  *

  Things were hotting up all over the place. At twelve-thirty that night the telephone rang at Voleney House until Ernestine Bright got up and answered it in her dressing-gown. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ she demanded in her haughtiest tone of voice and was horrified when Fergus phoning from Drumstruthie said that as a matter of fact he did.

  ‘Yes, I do know it’s damned well after midnight,’ he said, ‘and I wouldn’t be phoning now if it weren’t important. Where is that boy of yours, Timothy?’

  ‘I suppose he’s in London. That’s where he usually is.’

  ‘I realize that, and I wouldn’t be phoning you if I could find him there. I need to know very urgently where he is now.’

  ‘You don’t sound your usual self, Fergus,’ Ernestine told him. ‘A man of your age shouldn’t drink spirits. It’s bad for your blood pressure. Now, if you like to call in the morning –’

  ‘We can refrain from the admonitory if you don’t mind,’ said Uncle Fergus. ‘I want you to know that I have not been drinking. I also want you to know that I have Boskie here and –’

  ‘Boskie there?’ said Ernestine, genuinely shocked now. ‘Aunt Boskie? But you told us she was at death’s door last month. She can’t be with you.’

  ‘I assure you she is and she certainly isn’t dying, are you Boskie?’ From the sounds there was little doubt that Boskie, for all her ninety-one years, wasn’t yet dead. ‘Now then, Ernestine, she wants to talk to that son of yours.’

  ‘But why? What does she want with Timothy?’

  ‘My impression, if you really want to know, is that she wants to kill him,’ said Fergus. ‘If I were in her position, which thank God I am not, I would wish a really painful death, like boiling alive, for the little shit. Anyway here’s Boskie and she can tell you for herself.’