by Heide Goody
“Women don’t build,” said Chip.
“They don’t?”
“No, mate. They have wombs. They grow things. Children mainly.”
“I suppose,” said Michael politely.
“I built this house.”
Michael made a show of looking round at it.
“It’s a beautiful house.”
“Thank you. There are great men in the world. Builders like you and me. We build. We bring order. And we follow the rules. If I build a house without deep enough foundations, it will fall. So I don’t. I follow the rules. If a man builds a car, he doesn’t build it so you have to remove the head to get to the reservoir o-rings.”
“He’d be a fool,” agreed Michael, who had no idea what Chip was on about.
“He follows the rules,” said Chip. “And if someone’s made something complex and important, he will also provide a manual.”
“Absolutely,” said Michael, back on more confident ground again.
The kettle clicked off. Chip picked up a copy of the Bible that sat on the window sill between two dead, brown plants.
“Life needs a manual,” he said. “This world needs a manual. And God gave one to us.”
“You’re preaching to the converted, Chip,” said Michael.
“Ah, but the question is, mate, what to do when the masses don’t follow the manual? When the wicked and sinful start tearing down not just the things we have built, our great institutions, our great nation, our great civilisation, but also the world that God has built? What do we do?”
Chip poured two cups of tea.
“I tell you what, Michael. There’s no point in the righteous following the manual if no one else is. Doesn’t matter if I put diesel in the car if my bloody wife keeps accidentally filling it with petrol.”
He slammed the kettle down.
“The car grinds to a halt. That’s what happens. We have to send it to the garage so it can be fixed again, made like new, and then – and this is the important bit, mate, so listen up – when it comes back, someone isn’t allowed to drive it again. It’s taken away from her because she can’t be trusted to follow the rules.”
“It’s a powerful analogy,” said Michael.
“Isn’t it just? Thing is, I’ve had my eyes opened in recent times, opened by the wickedness and selfishness of others, and I’ve set myself a mission, a mission to fix and renew and to build afresh. There are those who would tear our world down with their wanton and salacious ways.”
“You’re talking about your church.”
“And more besides,” said Chip. “Fingers in pies, mate. My mission is a clear one, and everyone involved needs to follow the rules. We’re building something, together. But when things go wrong, I have to question whether the person responsible is a builder or a wrecker. One spoon or two?”
“Sorry?”
Chip held up a bag of sugar.
“Oh, none for me,” said Michael.
Chip gave him a dubious look and then shovelled four spoonfuls into his own paper cup.
“Now, we’ll have our brew,” he said, “and then you’ll tell me all about this business with the dog.”
The monkey grooming was ultimately short-lived and unsatisfying. Gorky was as fastidious about his own hygiene as he was about childcare and housekeeping, and there were slim pickings amongst his fur. The fingertip discovery of a crawly critter and what turned out to be a crumb of Cheesy Wotsit was the pinnacle of that brief diversion. Meanwhile, Jack-Jack remained resolutely asleep. Even Clovenhoof, blind and insensitive as he was, could tell that Gorky was disappointed. Someone else’s baby might be a poor substitute to caring for Beelzebelle, but it was a substitute of a sort.
“Cheer up, chimp,” said Clovenhoof. “If we don’t cock this up tonight, we’ll get invited back another time. Play the long game.”
Gorky muttered to himself.
“Well, life is tough. And short. And it’s always unfair. Now, go and get me something to eat and drink.”
Gorky hopped off.
Clovenhoof was left alone with his thoughts and the darkness. He was, in a certain sense, enjoying being blind. It gave him licence to demand the help of others, it was an excuse for a multitude of sins, and it evoked a genuine nostalgia for the lightless depths of Hell. People often used the word ‘stygian’ to describe the dark, but they had no idea. There was only one stygian darkness, that of the Styx itself. Beneath the black waters of that infernal river, there was no light, no sound, no sensation; the ultimate sensory deprivation tank. Back in the Old Days, they had used it for those Hellish residents who, in life, had often wanted ‘to get away from it all’. A couple of centuries at the bottom of the Styx made them remarkably sociable and garrulous…
Clovenhoof sniffed.
“Is something burning?” he called.
Gorky squawked from the kitchen.
“Are you sure?”
Gorky entered and placed a tray on Clovenhoof’s lap.
“What’s this?” said Clovenhoof.
Gorky guided his hands to a spoon and a hot bowl.
“But everything’s okay in the kitchen?” said Clovenhoof. “Because I thought I could smell something.”
Gorky lacked the vocal control to tut, but gave Clovenhoof a simian equivalent.
“Well, I can smell soup now. I meant something else.”
There came the piercing high-pitched whistle of a smoke detector upstairs.
“Like that!” snapped Clovenhoof.
He stood up quickly, the tray nonetheless held carefully in his hands.
“You left the cooker on!”
Gorky screeched angrily at him.
“If a monkey is clever enough to cook soup, he can remember to turn the bloody gas off!”
From the baby monitor came the murmurs and sniffs of a baby tossing unhappily in its sleep. Clovenhoof turned to the door.
“You find the smoke detector and take the batteries out, Gorky. I will deal with the kitchen.”
Clovenhoof took one step and kicked something hard, round and plastic. It flew through the air, bounced off the wall, and then landed, playing a tinny nursery rhyme at high volume.
“Bloody toys!” snapped Clovenhoof, stepped forward, trod on the same object again, and slipped over onto his back. The soup hit him a moment later, but it seemed a very long moment, probably because he knew it was coming.
Steaming tomato soup splashed across his chest, its gooey heat seeping through his shirt almost instantly. Clovenhoof leapt up, screaming, and ripped his scalding shirt from his torso.
The first hints of a cry warbled from the baby monitor.
“Gorky! Smoke alarm!” Clovenhoof yelled.
He hurried to the kitchen, guiding himself along the walls with soup-smeared hands. He felt the hard tackiness of lino beneath his hooves and knew he was in the right place.
“Cooker,” he said, and felt his way along the surface.
His hands found the hob controls before straying onto the hot rings. Smoke filling his nostrils, Clovenhoof felt out the four controlling knobs, worked out which was the odd one out and, feeling very pleased with his logical deductions, twisted it to match the off position of the others. The faint sound of gas died.
The smoke detector was still going.
“Damn it, Gorky,” he said and turned.
At that point, his midriff nudged something, and Clovenhoof tipped the pan of burning soup off the hob and over his crotch. Clovenhoof screamed again. Louder, naturally.
“Hot cock!” he yelled and, pained, stripped off his trousers and boxers to cool his tender parts. “You’ve melted my manhood, you maniac!” he cried. “Did no one ever tell you to always keep the pan handles turned in? You’re a health and safety nightmare!”
The alarm still persisted. Clovenhoof could hear Jack-Jack crying.
Naked and lightly coated with slowly cooling soup, Clovenhoof scrambled blindly for the stairs. He ignored the bumps and scrapes he received on the way, bounced his way
up, all the while heading towards the siren wail. At the top of the stairs, he could hear the alarm almost directly above him. He reached up, found the fast plastic disk of the alarm and ripped it from the wall. It continued to whistle in his hand, so he pounded it until it shut up. It took a bit of effort, and Clovenhoof felt plaster dust raining down all over the place before he succeeded.
He threw the defeated alarm down.
“Gorky!”
Clovenhoof heard a gurgle and laugh from along the landing. He approached, smearing soup as he went. Coughing on the plaster dust, Clovenhoof entered the room. He could see nothing, of course, but he could hear Jack-Jack in his cot. He could, he was certain, also hear the sound of a naughty little capuchin.
“I told you to sort out the alarm,” said Clovenhoof.
Gorky made a dismissive noise and then give a curious grunt.
Clovenhoof gestured at his own naked, sticky, and dusty body.
“This is your fault,” he said. “All of this. And look what you did to my knob! I’m sure even you can see it’s red-raw.” He thought about that. “Redder than usual. I’m going to be dipping it in ice-cream for a week just to soothe my pain.”
The thought of basting his genitals with ice-cream distracted Clovenhoof and his anger for a moment.
“Well, you’re looking after young Giblet now. You keep him occupied while I find some fresh clothes.”
He turned from the room and worked his way along the landing to another room. The plush carpet underfoot suggested a bedroom.
“Bathrobe,” he said to himself, feeling around. “Trousers. Anything.”
He found the door handles of a fitted wardrobe and opened it. He ran his grubby hands along the hanging clothes.
“Too frilly. Too thick. Corduroy? In the twenty-first century? Jesus! Ooh.”
Clovenhoof pulled out something light and silky. It could have been a kimono or a dressing gown; he couldn’t tell. He struggled with the fastenings, spun in circles while he struggled into it, and then, huffing, pulled it down.
“A little snug in the chest, but not bad,” he said. “Right, Gorky, I’m coming to take over.”
He became disorientated in his manoeuvring and edged towards the nearest wall. His fingers found a door handle.
He opened it, slipped through and, almost instantly, walked into something.
“What?”
Realisation dawned quickly. The iron railings to the front and side of him. The cool air wafting around his exposed legs. The bedroom had a balcony, one of those pathetically small British balconies that was barely deep enough for one person to stand on. It was ostentatious and Clovenhoof was jealous. To be able to step out of one’s bedroom and greet the morning, to feel the breeze rise up your skirts and soothe one’s scalded nether regions…
The door behind Clovenhoof clicked shut. Clovenhoof could tell from the chunky nature of the sound that this was the click of something locking firmly into place, of a door rendering itself unopenable. Clovenhoof found and waggled the door handle. He was correct. The door was locked.
“Hmmm,” he mused out loud. “Locked out on an upstairs balcony, covered in soup, and wearing nothing but what I now suspect is a woman’s dress.” He patted his pockets. “With no phone to call for help.”
He felt beyond the edges of the balcony and found nothing to grasp onto, no neighbouring balcony to leap to, no drainpipe to shin down. He shrugged.
“I’ve been in worse situations,” he said. “Probably…”
“So, no one knows how the dog got in,” said Chip. “What does the CCTV show?”
“We also suffered a… computer failure. I’ve set about recompiling and restoring the systems. If we’re lucky, we should have the computer systems and the CCTV back up and running very soon. That might provide some answers.”
Chip took a mouthful of tea and mulled this over, humming darkly to himself. Michael shifted uncomfortably, awaiting the man’s judgement. Chip swallowed, smacked his lips, and raised his eyebrows at Michael.
“What can I say, Michael? You’re doing important work, valuable work, and I know you’re giving it your all.”
“I am,” said Michael.
“We move on and we put this one incident behind us,” said Chip, a heavy emphasis on the word ‘one’. “But time is short.”
“Thank you,” said Michael and then, “Is it? Time, I mean.”
“Oh, yes,” said Chip darkly. “Let me show you.”
Taking his tea with him, Chip moved on from the kitchen and down a corridor at the rear of the house. As Michael followed, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Automatically, he took it out and looked at it. He did not recognise the number.
“Excuse me, one moment,” he said to Chip ahead of him and answered. “Hello?”
“Listen, Michael,” said Clovenhoof. “I need you to come quickly. Bring a ladder or a rope and grappling iron, or whatever balcony-rescuing equipment you prefer …”
“Jeremy, I’m a bit busy now,” said Michael and cut the call.
Chip had stopped at a closed door. Michael smiled apologetically at him.
“Sorry.”
Chip opened the door before him like Willy Wonka at the gates of his factory.
At first, Michael saw the interior of a perfectly ordinary garage, albeit a perfect ordinary garage that was long enough to accommodate a stretch Transit van with room to spare. At second glance, he saw that the length of one entire wall was taken up with a pinboard covered in newspaper cuttings, graphs, print-outs, and scribbles.
“Impressive,” said Michael automatically.
“Signs of the end times, mate,” said Chip and gestured for Michael to take a closer look.
There was an abundance of line graphs, most with either a markedly upward or downward trend to them. Here, a graph on the increased number of televisions in the average household with an additional line showing the number of ‘adult’ television channels in the UK. Here a graph of the rising divorce rate coupled with the declining number of marriages. Michael had to look twice at one.
“The diminishing size of dining tables and the rise in sales of instant gravy?”
“Oh, yes,” said Chip. “It’s not just the family that prays together that stays together. Families are falling apart because they’re not breaking bread together. They all just sit round on the sofa or in their rooms, stuffing their faces while watching their dirty movies. The cornerstone of the family, of our great nation, is the roast Sunday lunch, made from scratch, made with love. But no one does that anymore. Gravy, proper gravy, not the granulated stuff, is the cement that binds us.”
“An interesting theory,” said Michael, agreeing with Chip’s sentiment, although doubting the scientific rigour of his data-gathering, and also the professionalism of his building, given the gravy / cement analogy.
“It’s no theory,” said Chip, and planted an oily finger right in the centre of the largest graph on the board.
The combined line and scatter graph showed changes in the Earth’s overall temperature in the past century, plus incidence of extreme weather events in the same period.
“The flooding of the Somerset Levels, last winter’s storms, Hurricane Katrina… The conclusion is inescapable.”
Michael waited for Chip to explain, but the look on Chip’s face was clear. Michael had to show he, too, saw the truth.
“Loose morals are bringing about the end of the world?” he suggested.
“Got it in one.”
“So not greenhouse gases then?”
“It’s just another symptom, Michael. We must look deeper, at the lust and desire that pervades our society, at the sexual perversion and shameless nakedness that surrounds us.” He tapped a graph entitled ‘nipples per hour on the BBC’. “This is a sick world, and God is displeased.”
Clovenhoof humphed at himself while he tried once more to remember and tap in Ben’s number. Gorky, screeching at him from the bedroom, was not helping. However, the monkey had at least been helpful e
nough to open a bedroom window and toss Clovenhoof one of the household phones. Why the monkey couldn’t open the balcony door for him was a mystery, although Clovenhoof suspected it was merely a ruse to allow Gorky to spend more time with young Jack-Jack.
“Shut up!” shouted Clovenhoof. “It’s ringing.”
“Hello,” said Ben.
“Good. It’s you,” exclaimed Clovenhoof.
“Who else would it be?” said Ben.
“Well, so far it’s been three angry old women, a tyre fitter, a pizza delivery place, and a man called Roy.”
There was a pause.
“By any chance,” said Ben slowly, “have your attempts at blind babysitting gone horribly wrong?”
Clovenhoof made a noise of disgust.
“Some people have no faith. You want me to fail in life, don’t you? Just because a friend phones you up when they’re locked out on a balcony in ladies clothes, it doesn’t mean things have gone ‘horribly wrong’.”
“What’s happened?” said Ben.
“Well, that doesn’t matter. Look. It’s easily fixed. Just get over here. Make it quick too. Someone will need to pay for the pizza.”
Nerys turned off the hairdryer and listened again.
She had been jumpy all day. The mysterious noises of the morning, the hot kettle, and the magically appearing clothes had spooked her. She had spent part of the day reading up on spiritual possession and hauntings, but that had not eased her mind, particularly when Tina caught her doing it and clamped a hand on her shoulder. Nerys had, in one terrified action, screamed, leapt up, and slapped Tina across the cheek. The disciplinary meeting was pencilled in for the following Tuesday.
After a day like that, Nerys’s only plan had been to put on some washing, take a relaxing bath, and settle down with a glass of wine, an Ann Summers catalogue, and a TV box set of Hercule Poirot. She had achieved the first objective, but now froze, hair half dried, sure she had heard another noise.
There was another rap at her door, more urgent this time.