by Steve Aylett
‘My skeleton,’ he announced, with meaning, ‘is all it should be.’ Then he looked sharply at all present as though daring us to challenge him.
It became clear that Burst considered his skeleton the eighth wonder. He spoke of it until we could barely see, boasting that it was fantastic. With the arrogance of a monarch he claimed that it formed the Japanese pictogram for ‘public telephone’ when exposed to X-ray.
This cavalier attitude to endostructure was the last straw as far as Father was concerned and he hissed chapter and verse to Burst as we crept into the hospital. It has occurred to me since that the X-ray machine in the storeroom may not have been in working order but at the time we were bewildered to find that Burst’s chest contained nothing in the way of dense tissue or anything else - the image was as blank as a winter sky.
‘Stand aside,’ shouted Father, shoving Burst away and standing at the exposure plate. To his complete dismay the result showed a priceless Penny Black at the juncture of his sternum. Startled, the Verger punched him aside. His own chest seemed to bear the landplan of a flyover which would obliterate the natural and historic beauty of the local area. Professor Leap could detect an ongoing Napoleonic sea confrontation in his image, and disturbingly visible in Nanny Jack’s was the shadow of a giant praying mantis. Adrienne’s entire torso housed a daguerreotype of Ezra Pound being forcibly restrained by psychiatric nurses. Examining my own X-ray I could discern only a church steeple, a Hinton hypercube and a convulsing apache. We had to wrestle Uncle Snapper against the plate and the combined effect of the entire group struggling within the frame produced a kaleidoscopic montage of the 50,000 American GIs who went AWOL in Second World War Europe.
Leaning in a corner with smugly folded arms, Burst asked us rhetorically whether these were the musculoskeletal systems appropriate to civilized men.
Gathering our wits with litter-spikes, we went home and resolved never to think about our skeletons again - naively forgetting that our skeletons would make their presence felt whether we liked it or not.
STAGE
I’m all for education but not when it entails being glared at by a pair of eyes behind which there is no brain. There are few lessons to be learned under a moron’s tutelage and foremost among them are degradation and fantasies of homicide - skills I consider unworthy even of a chef.
Mother once suggested that a school curriculum would slow my learning to a manageable rate and the next morning Father took me reluctantly to school. Whenever one of us entered the village, women swept children from the street, bicycles were abandoned, windows were slammed shut and ineffectual shopkeepers stood armed and apprehensive in doorways. But today this was raised to the tenth power - I felt like the previously unseen mutant child of a newly-defiant workman. One villager lobbed a lump of garlic, which I caught in my mouth. On arriving at the school I was asked to chalk my name on the blackboard for all to see and I struck up BEELZEBUB in elaborate gothic script, making some of the more timid children scream. Later I was hauled up for writing when I was meant to be guzzling milk and was told to read my scribbles to the rest of the class:
TED HUGHES’ SCHOOLDAYS
A crocodile died for my satchel –
tearful ears of sedative
pierced a carapace
to leave a leering dead weight
and a hateful, glossy case
The mauve-faced teacher snatched it away before I could continue. Only Billy Verlag was snorting with laughter. My first and last day at primary school smashed to an end when I begged the headmistress to beat me as hard as I knew she wanted to. It was decided that I should be educated at home by Professor Leap.
Leap was a fiercely complex personality. If his innards were removed, unravelled and stretched taut, I’d be the last to assign blame. A man of incoherent views and boundless energy, he had fled the medley of assassination attempts which are among the distressing hazards of academic life. Presented with myself snaffling in a cage, Leap launched a three-pronged assault, each prong as dreary as the next. By the light of a single candle he would moon around in a cloak and sing mournful dirges while strumming a lute:
I mime amid the crows and fog,
Concluding with a groan –
The only watcher was a dog
Whose snout was dripping foam.
During these dismal interludes I was a sleeping volcano, waiting to blast forth a flood of indifference. ‘What images does the music bring to mind?’ he asked, and I described a vision I had experienced of Leap creaking from a rope and undergoing his final, boring spasm.
The second prong was history and propaganda. ‘What was it,’ he asked, ‘that enabled the English to travel the world, taking control of every land they encountered?’
‘Bad manners.’
‘I was thinking not of a guiding principle but a skill. For what was England celebrated?’
‘Farce?’
I meant that it was a nation made from farce’s ingredients but at that age I could not express myself with such clarity. Leap made allowances and switched to the third prong of his programme - philosophy. ‘If everyone else in the world leapt off a cliff, what would you do?’
‘Celebrate.’
‘Progress is a bit thorny,’ I heard Leap telling Father under my window one evening. ‘I don’t suppose we can drown the bugger?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
And so it went on, sustained by my assertion that Spinoza made his living as a professional clown and Leap’s frustration at being unable to find any evidence to the contrary. Then one day Leap had a blinder of an idea - we would attend the opera. I was all for it, and Leap was soon driving Adrienne and me through the countryside and insisting that he could spy ‘something beginning with T’.
‘Trudging mourners?’
‘No.’
‘Telepathically spooky youngsters?’
‘No.’
‘Twitching centipedes?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What, then.’
‘Trees. Trees, that’s all!’
At the theatre we witnessed a display which I daresay civilised cultures disallow by law. Otter-eyed, snivelling opera singers wailed nonsensical laments which, upon subsequent translation, I discovered to be a tissue of lies. One had been moaning about a dragon. The entire affair had been a waste of time.
But on the night I was not to know this - all I could do was stare in disbelief as a squad of bloated louts tried to make enough noise to convince us something was happening. Within minutes I was prepared to gnaw off a leg to escape. The audience seemed to be in a state of keen amazement or bitter concentration. On one side of me Professor Leap sat still as a pillar of salt. I turned to Adrienne - she looked at me sideways like a turbot, and I knew we were undergoing similar torture.
On stage it seemed that for half an hour a man with a beard had been deciding what to order in a restaurant, and was yelling every twang of prevarication at the top of his lungs. I was twitching like a convict in the hotseat - all my restraint turned to fog. ‘The steak, you bastard,’ I yelled, ‘have the steak and get on with it!’ Professor Leap parped like a punctured gas-line, trembling with pressurised rage as all eyes turned our way. I suppose the bearded man was used to this sort of outburst as he barely reacted, and perhaps welcomed any distraction from his embarrassing exhibition. He was now sat at the table sobbing at his weakness and lack of will. I rolled something from the corner of my eye which resembled a fragment of toast. ‘What about this?’ I bellowed, standing, and hurled it so that it bounced across the table. ‘Eat this if you can! It’s better than you deserve for boring the shit out of every bastard here!’ In a genuine attempt to contain laughter, Adrienne pursed her lips tight and let out what sounded like a florid raspberry. The bearded man was stood looking up at us in anger, fists balled on hips. The audience, which had previously glared as though holding my doom in reserve, now regarded me with a farmer’s loathing, and began to rise. ‘Go ahead, you spoonfed idio
ts!’ I roared. ‘Cluttering the world with your inanities!’
‘The boy doesn’t mean it,’ squeaked Leap, standing in fright to assure them. ‘He’s just very, very bored.’
It was a full four months before our bandages were removed, and for a full year Professor Leap shrieked when he saw me, which was many times a day. He began going around belligerently untrousered and was discovered one night crouching naked on the porch roof, torn by rain.
God help those who sit through the whole of the Ring. When I desire a spectacle I look to my own conscience. Glancing back I see that my reaction to opera was reserved, considering what it has cost me in trauma and grief. We have truth in order not to die of art.
LIAR
My mother was an insane and matronly lady with two sky-blue eyes which she claimed were interchangeable. And she sat at my bedside formulating tales which I now understand were meant to fire my imagination and slam me into nightmares so inescapable as to make The Trial look like The Clangers. She had my undivided attention as she described a spectral, nocturnal intruder, garlanded with entrails, beaked, fishfaced and wearing a turban. When I asked in undisguised wonderment why it wore a turban she said ‘To hide its glowing brain.’ Apparently this impetuous ghoul biffed its way into kids’ bedrooms and took the occupants free of charge to some farcical underworld, where even the most compliant brat was submitted to baleful tortures. Mother stated with absolute conviction that the brute was brimming over with lubrication and unnecessary thoracic legs. She said hide under the covers when you hear the frilling of its gills, watch out for its utensil hands, don’t even try to locate its arse, and so on.
It was clear we couldn’t have a thing like that running around and I resolved to trap and kill the beast using every ruse at my command. One of the things Mother always emphasised was that the creature only sprang into view when a child had been misbehaving. In order to lure the beast I would have to provoke some kind of ruck and I decided to belt Uncle Snapper in the eye to kick off the campaign. Clutching at his face and bellowing for assistance, Snapper flushed like a blood orange. Everyone piled in to spectate his flailing distress. ‘This flaunting idiot claims the right to ignore every moral code which inconveniences him!’ he yelled. ‘He’s just this second belted me in the face!’
At this Father swelled with pride and pleasure. ‘Good boy,’ he said.
‘But Dad, look!’ I cried, kicking Snapper expansively in the balls. The onlookers began to laugh and applaud, already composing the tale for the mirth of future generations.
Father was chuffed and encouraging. ‘No need for concern, Snapper. He’ll tire of it eventually.’
At three in the afternoon I told the Verger exactly what I thought of him and his way of life. The Verger smiled and took me aside - in fact I was taken so far aside I ended up in the lake. ‘It’s better than you deserve, boy!’ he hollered from the shoreline.
‘I don’t love it or even like it!’ I yelled, sputtering as I trod water. ‘Snap said you were a crippling burden on our leisure and joy - he wrote down every seditious word. Said I should memorise it - say it to you without pulling any punches.’
The Verger was operatically apprised, adopting the stance of a fierce Victorian balloonist. ‘Oho! So Colonel Blimp’s funnelling his malice!’
‘Yes sir,’ I said, swallowing and coughing water. ‘Had everyone convinced you should go and take your creaking sagacity with you. Whole household was behind him, urging him on with word and gesture. I drew the short straw. Tried to hide but they dragged me out by the legs. Don’t be angry, sir – they’re uneducated and mired in hopeless lust.’
The Verger strode off with a set expression, rolling up his sleeves and fists.
He happened to encounter Father first. Father was reading the paper when the Verger entered, austere and glowering. ‘So the whole household thinks I’m an acute picture of parsimonious reserve and as abruptly shootable as a town crier, is that it?’
Father looked up, mildly. ‘Well now that you mention it, yes.’
‘On my ruddy bum I am!’ shouted the Verger with a compressed bellicosity.
As I slapped ashore a blue light pulsed across the landscape - the Verger speeding to hospital in an armoured van.
‘Snapper,’ said Father during the evening meal. ‘Imagine my disappointment this afternoon when the Verger went bonkers.’
‘Eh?’ said Snapper, perplexed.
‘I had hoped that your fooling days were over. Then the Verger, poor man, flies off his hinges.’ He looked at Snapper coldly. ‘Am I understood?’
It was getting dark and I was not yet disgraced.
‘Congratulations, Mother,’ I said, ‘you have constructed this meal with a cunning and ruthless evil.’
Everyone agreed. ‘The bacon’s like chainmail,’ remarked Professor Leap.
‘And this fish is as fresh as a newborn,’ said Adrienne.
‘The gills are still working on mine. At least she covered it with cress so as not to distress us. It seems about to cry.’
‘Look at the bloody bite-radius on the thing,’ urged poor Mr Cannon. ‘And what’s this? Cartilage? What are you making of that, Professor?’
‘I do believe Cannon that you have discovered the unhappy sod’s swim bladder.’
After dinner I was taken aside by Father. ‘Trying to keep order in this cracked house is like trying to bury your grandmother,’ he said. ‘Difficult and distressing, yet one of the activities I crave though it exhausts me. You, lad, are the civilising force I never dared hope for. Nonpious honesty. This is the proudest day of my life.’
The long and the short of it is this - despite my having kicked Snapper in the balls, implicated Snapper in the Verger’s breakdown, set fire to the curtains and blamed Snapper, shot at Snapper, boxed the ears of Snapper, roared abuse at Snapper, reversed over Snapper and cackled at Snapper, it seemed that as far as everyone was concerned I had spent the day behaving myself until I was raw.
That night I lay in bed as Mother read a story about a dog who went to the moon. ‘And good riddance,’ she concluded, shutting the book.
‘But before I settle down,’ I said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ And cupping both hands to my nose, I blew out a snotpile resembling pulverised kale.
Mother shrieked like a parson.
‘It’s perfectly legit, mother.’
‘You evil child!’ she screamed. ‘You’ll lock antlers with the monster I’ve mentioned for the terrors you enjoy!’
After Mother had pushed off I lay in wait for the phantom, which I had privately concluded was some kind of mutant, like Dumbo. My vigil was rewarded. At midnight a sinister shadow entered the room, its head clinking the mobile I had made from dried anchovies. Loitering and ragged, it stepped into the snare and was flung upside down, dropping several knives and making sounds which were frankly tedious and uninspired. The whole household burst in with guns at the ready as I hit the light and took aim with a Beretta and a Smith .38. Ofcourse the honking and flipping aberration suspended before us was Uncle Snapper, bent on revenge. More surprisingly, Mother was carrying a cake with eight candles as the household gathered at my bed-end singing ‘Happy Birthday’. Father pinned a pistol target to Snapper’s back.
MISTER HIERONYMUS
In fact there was a real bogeyman which my family had been seeing for generations and which they called Mister Hieronymus. Supposedly it appeared at moments of dangerous portent, such as my own birth - everyone asserted Hieronymus had delivered me. Its blurred image appears in a murky sepia-tint of my great grandfather, who is sat blithe on a bicycle - behind him a gaunt figure stands like a human pterodactyl.
But the first encounter I recall was caused by Professor Leap. He was culturing a sample of his nerves and the result was a tangle of microthin wires like an industrial art exhibit. It almost became potbound and Leap removed it to the hothouse, where he had set up a nutrient vat. ‘No sense experimenting with nerves or anything else when they’re in my body,�
�� he explained, flushed with laughter. ‘But these beauties? Look at ’em!’
This was all fine and dandy until he decided to run a nerve bundle from the hothouse, across the yard and into his arm. ‘This way,’ he said, bedding down in the dining room, ‘I can feel things when I’m not even there.’ We told him he wouldn’t feel anything but the tickle of greenfly but he didn’t care - he liked the idea of having a conscious process occurring outside of his body.
The experiment was carried out at night to reduce the likelihood of someone kicking through the nerve lead. But it seemed the family phantom was never far from the Hall - it blundered into the hothouse and became entangled, making itself known like a chicken snagged on a barbed-wire fence. Professor Leap was shot through with horror vibes, his hair turning instantly white. Mister Hieronymus was wired into his system, filling him with visions of spinelight, subterranean scabgardens and yellow voltaic pain. Leap saw children lost spectacularly in nursery forges. Hieronymus thrashed in the nerve net, firing images of blown ghost and the unravelling dead. Leap yanked the suture-plug from his arm and lay trembling, veins hammering like fists.
In the morning the snow-haired Leap couldn’t stop shaking. He pointed at a window and said he saw tatters of devil flapping there. Snapper was unsympathetic and appalled. ‘This nerve farm of yours has served as a betsy lamp – we’ll have moaning glowheads converging on us from miles around. God almighty!’
‘Mind you,’ began Father.
‘Don’t encourage him!’ yelled Snapper, astonished and exasperated.
The dense mesh in the hothouse had been warped by the intrusion. ‘What if it’s still in there?’ whispered Leap, trembling. ‘I daren’t plug in again.’
‘This ganglia should be destroyed by fire,’ bellowed Snapper. ‘Verger, back me up on this - nerves?’
The Verger pulled up the hood of his robe, his face extinguishing in shadow.
‘Well I for one think it’s the spice,’ I said, barely registering Adrienne’s slow, stern, meaningful shake of the head. ‘And I’ll plug into this mess like the fierce one I am.’