‘Quick!’ Janet shouted in alarm. ‘He’s choking!’ She stood, transfixed, and stuffed her knuckles into her mouth. She started sobbing. The tears filled her eyes and flooded her lashes.
‘Let him choke,’ Mr Marvel said with absolute indifference and emptied his box of dominoes on the table.
‘Skipper!’ Janet screamed, jumping from foot to foot in terror. ‘Skipper! There’s something wrong with him!’
She cried for help and I couldn’t resist. The sound of her screaming pierced my heart. So I jumped from my chair and ran to the rescue. I’d read enough Katie Pphart to know that the cure for hysteria is a sharp smack in the face. The heroine has hysterics and the hero slaps her face. Scream. Slap. As simple as that. So I rushed to the sofa, pushed Janet aside and clubbed Franklin with Jesus Rebukes the Pharisees. He yelped, shook his head and continued to laugh. A terrible, mocking laughter that howled and moaned like a tempest inside him.
I clubbed him for a second time, a cruel smack across the mouth struck with such force that it buckled my weapon. He stopped shouting and gasped in surprise. He threw back his head, fixed me with an evil eye and grinned like a Halloween pumpkin. And then he trembled, his eyes fluttered, he spluttered, giggled and laughed again.
‘It’s no good!’ I shouted at Marvel. ‘I think he’s having a fit!’ It was horrible. He looked tormented. He flared his nostrils and clawed at his stomach. His laughter became a lamentation, a dreadful wailing that screeched and swooped around our heads and filled the room with its poisonous odour.
‘He’s a bugger!’ Marvel grumbled. He clambered from his chair, stamped across the room, recovered the pencil pot from the carpet and brought it down sharply on Franklin’s head. He didn’t hesitate. He picked up the pot and smacked Franklin’s head as if he were hitting a nail with a hammer.
Franklin grunted, his jaws clacked together, but still he couldn’t stop laughing. He crawled into a corner of the sofa and tried to hide among the cushions, shielding his face with his arms. He looked like a giant insect, a brittle mantis with gangling, broken limbs. ‘Hit him again,’ I suggested.
Franklin honked and shrieked the louder, wheezing with panic and pain. He scrambled among the cushions in a feeble attempt to escape his tormentors.
Mr Marvel shook his head. ‘We don’t want to kill him.’
‘Water!’ Janet shouted from her hiding place behind the door. ‘Throw a bucket of water on him…’
‘That’s for dogs!’ Marvel grumbled.
‘I’m going for help!’ I shouted impatiently and started running towards the back parlour. We needed a blindfold and ropes to restrain him. We needed something to stupefy him. We needed someone to call a doctor.
‘What’s happening?’ mother complained. ‘It sounds like bedlam out there!’ She was sitting with Dorothy watching TV as they plundered a packet of store-cupboard biscuits. I think they were watching Random Harvest, with Ronald Colman looking bewildered and walking into the furniture. They were both sobbing and squeezing pink paper handkerchiefs.
‘Franklin’s gone mad!’ I panted, clutching the back of a chair for support. ‘He’s finally gone mad!’
Dorothy looked startled. ‘Is he possessed?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is he foaming at the mouth?’
I shook my head.
‘Is he talking in tongues?’ she demanded, brushing sugar grains from her fingers. ‘Is he shouting obscenities?’ She seemed frightened and rather excited, as if she fully expected an evening of amateur exorcism.
‘He’s laughing!’
‘I don’t believe it!’ mother said, pushing away from the table and pulling her cardigan closed.
We rushed into the front parlour but we were too late. It was finished. There was silence. Marvel and Janet had vanished. The dominoes remained scattered across the table. Franklin was sitting in the sofa, pale, exhausted, drenched with sweat but no longer screaming or clutching his brain.
He was calm. He was smiling. His eye were bloodshot and staring.
He nursed the pencil pot in his hands.
28
He was never seen again without that pencil pot. He carried it with him everywhere. It became his talisman, a charm against the Dwarf’s revenge. I watched him waste hours each morning scouring the papers for rumour and scandal, some tangible sign of the Dwarf’s disgrace. But as the days passed and he found nothing, he began to sense that something was wrong. Here was an unexpected twist to the plot! A conspiracy of silence! It never occurred to him that his poisonous letters might be dismissed as the work of a madman. He grew more hunted and unpredictable. His language became more convoluted, peppered with obscure words, snatches of French, clots of German, bizarre oaths and highly coloured phrases that flowered and withered and sprouted again until they entirely choked his conversation, permitting no daylight to penetrate, and he fell silent, lost, unhappy, watching us with bewildered eyes.
‘Poor, tenured soul!’ Dorothy said whenever we spoke of him. ‘He needs to find comfort in the Lord.’
‘He’s past salvation,’ I said.
‘No one is lost forever,’ Dorothy corrected and it worried me for a little while that she might find Franklin, in his present tortured condition, so challenging that she’d ask him to join our bible classes.
‘Perhaps we should try the subtle approach,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to frighten him. I could lend him my copy of Jesus Conquers the Universe.’
‘Do you think it might help?’
‘It worked for me,’ I said.
I continued my studies. I struggled through Judges, Ruth and Samuel, battled through Kings and Chronicles. But I found the desert landscape increasingly depressing, with its long monotony of goats and thorn trees. A cruel and barren land filled with an ugly, quarrelsome people. Why had God chosen Palestine for the Holy Land when He had the freedom to pick and choose anywhere in Creation? What if Christ had been born in another part of the world? Entirely. Far away from the squalor of Roman occupation, dried figs and open-toe sandals.
He might have been born in the glittering snow fields of the north or the tropical islands of the blue Pacific. God could have snapped his fingers and everything would be different! No more squabbling Jews and Gentiles. We’d have inherited the parable of the doubting musk ox and the story of the prodigal polar bear, Jesus would have performed his miracles using the local ingredients: coconuts, yams and flying fishes. Consider the Nativity lit by the Northern lights, the wind whipping snow, the howl of hungry wolves on the ice and the clanking bells of the reindeer herds; or the wise men beating gifts of turtle meat, orchids and cowrie shells, surfing a coral reef in a ceremonial canoe. A twist in geography could have made all the difference.
The landscape shapes a religion, drenches its stories and characters. Where there are mountains, the rocks and the rivers are touched by magic. Giants inhabit the caves and sprites command the water-courses. Where there are forests, the spirits and demons inhabit the trees, disguising themselves as birds and animals. And where there is nothing but heat and dust even the gods of that place retreat, allow themselves to become remote and watch from their palaces in the sky.
And what would have happened if another brand of faith, from a different tribe, had become the dominant force in the world? How did we find ourselves trapped in a church with a crucifixion for a trademark? Was it an accident of history that Christianity had spread into Europe and then to all nations, carried upon the colonial ambitions of powerful, military governments? Or was it one of God’s jokes? Christ’s message of tolerance delivered with sword and musket.
If the early maritime trade between India and the Persian Gulf had taken the gods of the Indus into Syria and Europe, we might now be celebrating 4,000 years of happy marriage with some powerful river god from the Ganges flood plains. Imagine the possibilities! If we hadn’t adopted a desert blood cult we might have taken, instead, a jolly rain god. A god not of fire and brimstone but of fog and thunder.
&nbs
p; And if the Hindus had been crusaders it might have been Nandi the divine bull or Ganesh the elephant-headed god sitting on the parlour table, wreathed in flowers and lit by candles. Ten thousand gods from a gaudy heaven of warrior-kings and beasts of burden. Enough gods to suit every taste. A different god for each day in the year. A god for every occasion.
And what if Africa had emerged triumphant and conquered the rampaging Arabs and Romans, chased them north and subdued Europe with animistic cults and ancestor worship? We’d be happy fondling stones, sewing fetish bags and talking to spirits in trees. Trust me. We’d continue to live in a perfectly well-ordered world. Our lives would not feel impoverished for our ignorance of the plagues brought down on the Philistines or the battle honours of Judah. We could sleep without knowing the sons of Levi, Issachar, Ephraim and Benjamin.
And if there were no gods, if we were at last agreed that we were created from stardust animated by the miracle of molecular self-assembly, we would continue to ride through the cosmos. The planets would still turn. Our lives would still be terrible.
Dorothy wasn’t interested in this kind of free-floating speculation. She grew impatient with so many questions. She wanted me to do nothing more than raise my bible and praise the Lord.
‘Living your life without Jesus is like finding yourself at a Schoenberg concert,’ she declared, with a fair degree of passion. ‘No matter how hard you strain your ears, none of it makes any sense.’ I didn’t care to argue. Schoenberg, it seemed, was in league with the Devil.
Actually, she had a huge fund of these Christmas cracker wisdoms, in a range from the painfully obvious to the deeply obscure.
Life without Jesus is like a television without an aerial — you must be content with only half the picture — was certainly one of her favourites, suggesting, as it did, that she alone in the house received perfect clarity of vision.
Jesus is like a big ball of wool — you can try to knit Him to your own design but you’ll find that He’s always too short in the sleeves — was one of her more baffling observations.
Franklin became rather good at this game and, when the mood took him, would construct maxims of such breathtaking complexity that their meanings could never be deciphered. His sarcasm was wasted on Dorothy, of course, who didn’t waste time in listening to him but simply smiled as she waited for the opportunity to reply with a maxim from her own collection in the hope that it suited the circumstances.
I hadn’t yet found my own comfort in Jesus but I began to look forward to evening confession. I depended upon her determination to wash out my sins and save my soul. It was crucial to my stumbling courtship: these blissful interludes in which she indulged my fantasies and encouraged me to describe my dreams.
‘Do you have anything to confess?’
‘Hot and fleshly thoughts,’ I would whisper, hidden behind the shelter of the folding screen.
‘Again?’
‘It’s my age.’
‘It’s not enough to confess these sins,’ she warned me. ‘God is always there to forgive, but He wants you to stay away from temptation.’
‘I can’t help it,’ I complained. ‘I’m seized by wicked and earthly notions.’
‘Do you want to tell me about them?’
And so I would spin fantastic yarns of my struggle with the forces of darkness. I was obliged to tread a most delicate path between delight and debauchery and took great care to protect my tormentor’s identity for fear of arousing suspicions.
‘Do you know this woman?’
‘She wears a mask.’
‘A mask?’
‘For she stealeth in secret through the night and maketh me to lie down with her strange persuasions.’
I was more candid when I spoke of my weakness in temptation, introducing scenes of cheerful violation, bondage, fetish objects, food abuse and elaborate moonlit rituals. I would watch Dorothy through the hole in the screen as she sat on the floor to hear my confession. She sat serene, hands clasped, head bowed, eyes half-closed and dreaming. Far from being scandalised by the chattering of my demons, she gave the impression of falling asleep.
I tried to keep her entertained. In an effort to sharpen her interest I would invent new and amusing locations for these erotic encounters. Carnival rides. Wax museums. Windmills. Aquariums. Aviaries. Theatre balconies. Department store windows.
The results were not encouraging.
‘Have you finished?’ she would ask eventually, when I’d fallen silent, having exhausted myself by committing every crime of passion available to my imagination.
‘Yes,’ I’d say bleakly.
‘Forgiven.’
29
‘By thunder, but I must have you this night or let me perish in the attempt!’ Mr Romance shouted as he whirled forward in a storm of passion, abruptly seizing her small, dainty waist and jerking her into his broad violent arms to confront the terrible madness that flashed in his dark and mysterious eyes.
‘My heart has already been given to Jesus!’ she gasped defiantly, touching her beautiful, naked throat in search of the missing gold crucifix, yet she knew she had betrayed herself and trembled beneath his hands as she felt the excitement of his brandied breath on the half-exposed globes of her polished white breasts.
‘Be warned, madam, I have no patience with your reluctance!’ he snarled as she felt his long, strong fingers invading the soft, silk embroidery of her delicate, handstitched underskirt. ‘For I am a creature of the night and dawn is fast approaching…’
She cried out in great distress as she found herself pulled from her bed and dragged across the rough oak floor towards the looming shadows of the diabolical contraptions that had lately been constructed in the secrecy of his private chamber. 'Believe me, sir, I would rather suffer Hell’s torment than give myself to your monstrous embrace!’ she panted as she twisted and struggled against the restraint of the cruel leather harness.
But he merely threw back his head and laughed. ‘Rest assured, my lady, for in this house they are but one and the same!’
30
It was time for my mother to grow suspicious about my friendship with Dorothy. Perhaps she felt in some measure responsible for the situation. It had been her idea — when Marvel had failed to show any interest — to make me Dorothy’s companion. She had thrown us together. She had encouraged me to keep our guest amused with a pilgrimage through the city’s churches. But as the courtship developed and I retired each evening to Dorothy’s room with a large-print bible under my arm, mother began to show signs of alarm.
She waited until we had settled down together to watch the TV wrestling before she began her interrogation. I hadn’t bothered with the wrestling for more than a week. But Dorothy wanted time to write postcards and mother insisted I keep her company in the back parlour for the battle between Abdullah the Turk and the unpredictable Junkyard Dog.
‘You should have been here last night!’ mother said, as she savaged a cold bacon sandwich. The spectacle of half-naked men attempting to throttle each other always gave her an appetite.
‘Why?’
‘Grudge match. Rage in a cage. Submission or knock out. The Great Muta was fighting the Crippler.’
‘I wish I’d seen that.’
‘It was a corker!’ she chortled.
‘What happened?’
‘You should have been here.’
‘I was looking after Dorothy.’
Abdullah the Turk took the Dog by surprise, grabbed him by the ears and hammered home a series of punishing head butts. The Dog shouted and sprayed blood. As he fell to his knees, Abdullah spilled forward and hit the deck. The Turk was big but he was clumsy. When he struggled back to his feet, the Dog catapulted from the ropes with a flying drop kick that sent the Turk sprawling. Abdullah roared and scrambled across the ring on his hands and knees. The Dog chased him into a corner and tried to wrench a leg from its socket.
‘You seem to be spending a lot of your time looking after Dorothy,’ mother said casually
.
‘She’s going home at the end of the month,’ I said.
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘Yes.’
In his excellent book Complete Science of Wrestling, published in 1909, the Russian champion George Hackenschmidt describes some fifty basic wrestling moves, from standing throws to ground combat. It was a rough sport — even in those early days. During a 1906 championship tournament in London, Hackenschmidt took the belt by breaking the arm of Monster Mandrali. Hackenschmidt was a tough guy. But even he could not have imagined the modern fighter performing backward somersaults from the top of the corner post, with his opponent’s head locked between his knees and the ring ropes wrapped in barbed wire. These moves defy death. They challenge belief. They require a breed of ring warrior with steel nerves and liquid bones.
‘Kick him where it hurts!’ mother shouted, shaking her sandwich in fury. Abdullah had managed to insert his fist into the Dog’s mouth and was trying to snap off teeth with his fingers. The Dog squirmed. He hacked and chopped at Abdullah’s belly. It was like slapping tripe with a paddle. The crowd hissed and bellowed. The referee danced and waved his arms.
‘She seems to be very fond of you,’ mother continued.
‘I’m a very likeable sort of person.’
She grunted and took a bite of her sandwich. ‘What do you find to talk about locked away in her room every night?’
‘We’re not locked away!’
‘Then why don’t you talk downstairs in the parlour?’
‘Jesus. She wants me to find a friend in Jesus.’
Mother frowned and shook her head. ‘I don’t know where we went wrong with you. We’ve always tried to do our best. We’ve tried to make you clean-living. You don’t smoke. You don’t take drugs. And now this happens!’
Mr Romance Page 14