by Steve Aylett
‘The sheer, staggering verve of the boy! Gormless and bewildered at the failure of his translucent fibs!’
‘The sulphurous swamp of his lust.’
‘In for a penny.’
‘Did you hear that? I’m bowled over by this I must say.’
‘Bedclothes puffing like a grounded parachute.’
‘The girl’s using him to practise on.’
‘I knew it since you were three,’ said Snapper. ‘Whipping dolls with a jump lead. And you, Adrienne - why can’t you snog horses like a normal girl?’
‘For fear of catching your germs,’ said Adrienne, her voice devoid of all emphasis.
Snapper made to storm into the room and found himself on the landing going the other way.
‘I assure you,’ said Adrienne, tucking in her T-shirt. ‘We’ll laugh about this later - with the appropriate medication.’ She crossed the room with her lithe, swinging stride, and slammed the door on them.
‘Well,’ I muttered at the window, gazing up at the murky sky, ‘said.’
The inquisition followed breakfast. We had seasoned the meal with a sparky fatalism, meeting eachother’s glances with a solemn and flirtatious remorse. When the family surrounded us our hearts were less than usually disarmed by the powerful emotions which the Hall’s erstwhile fare bestirred.
‘Born with an iron spoon in your gob, both of you,’ said Father reluctantly, Snapper standing sternly by. ‘And you select this as the fine way.’
‘We’d do the same again,’ said I.
‘But quieter,’ said Adrienne.
‘So that’s the song is it?’ shouted Snapper, unable to hold back. ‘I ought to feed you legfirst to the bloody piano! Take a diamond-drill to your windpipe!’
‘So should I,’ said Leap. ‘How do you like them apples?’
‘I find them strangely familiar,’ I said. ‘Like a stainless steel doughnut.’
‘Is that the best your beestung brain can come up with?’ yelled Snapper. ‘Why didn’t you drown him at the pump, brother?’
‘Changelings,’ the Verger bellowed. ‘Spooky as hell. The boy there, drooping around like a Shelleyan orphan. Beckoned me into the hothouse. Showed me a skull. I was out of there as fast as my arms and legs could take me.’
‘Changelings?’ said Adrienne, standing. ‘Then we’re not your responsibility. Come on, laughing boy, we don’t belong here.’
‘Time enough to grin when you’re coffin-bound and skinless!’ shrieked the Verger at our retreating backs. ‘Lust is flesh-deep! You can’t cheat death - it must be done fair and square!’
‘We’re all god’s children,’ whispered Adrienne, nudging me with a hip. ‘Whether he likes it or not.’
POD
I ascended the narrow stairwell to the tower where the Verger lurked in a kind of chaotic apothecary. He was writing at a rolltop desk and facing away from me when I entered with a doorcreak. Lambent sunlight played through dust and glass vessels.
‘Hello Verger. Weather’s brightened up.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, laughing boy,’ he said without taking his eyes from his work
I scuffed aimlessly.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing of interest to the lustful.’
I pottered around the room, trailing a finger through shelfdust and scrutinising murky jars. ‘I say, Verger - is this a dove you’ve preserved?’
The Verger turned, raised his eyebrows and stood enraged, storming over. ‘No business of yours, hell-child,’ he thundered, yanking at the jar with such force that it flew over his shoulder and exploded against a wall.
The Verger roared me down the stairs to Father’s study. ‘Bottomless arrogance,’ he told him. ‘Uncontrollable urges. Smirking evil.’
‘In English, Verger.’
‘Well there was I in the precious sanctuary of the tower when laughing boy here pranced in and made a remark. A remark which left nothing to the imagination.’
‘Listen to me, Verger,’ I said, ‘the amount of bullshit I take from you is unbelievable. You and your bland assumptions can balk awkwardly into the lake. If there’s one thing I deplore, Father, it’s a bigot on the high ground.’
‘Have you two fellows ever heard of conciliation?’
The Verger and me began to laugh simultaneously, and halted glowering at eachother.
‘My point is this,’ Father stated mildly. ‘Man stands alone in sickness unto death. You could save alot of time, emotion and money by cultivating your own amusement - tying snakes in a knot, pronging your nose with a hoof spike and so on.’
All this was completely alien to the Verger, who regarded Father with tortured amazement. ‘Did I hear correctly?’
Father gave me a helpless look. ‘I’ve done what I can.’
‘This beggars belief,’ said the Verger in astonishment. ‘Your son rides roughshod over my life and you sit there like a barrel.’
‘What precisely did he do, Verger? Answer without lying if you can.’
‘He picked up a jar,’ stated the Verger with an effort of self-control, ‘and threw it.’
‘Threw it?’
‘Further than was either pleasant or necessary.’
‘Father, do you think I’ve no more pressing business than to play volleyball with this moron’s jars of snot?’
‘Is this true, Verger?’
‘Why should I put snot of all things in a jar?’
‘Postponement of a more permanent decision?’
‘A reluctance to accept the natural order,’ I suggested. ‘After all, Father, you and I try to escape our snot as fast as we can. This gentleman surrounds himself with the stuff.’
‘The boy’s reasoning is sound, Verger, though I say it with tears in my eyes.’
‘I see no tears.’
‘All in good time,’ said Father. ‘You may anticipate a veritable flood.’
‘I’ve better things to do than stand here anticipating your secretions!’ yelled the Verger, and slammed from the room.
‘Did you hear that?’ I said to Father, with meaning. Ofcourse I hadn’t the faintest idea what was in the Verger’s jars but I was damned if I’d let him steal the show with lies inferior to my own.
One night when the household was performing a ritual in the reading room, I snuck into the tower with a torch. I swept the beam along the shelves and selected a good-sized jar labelled V5, taking it down and unscrewing the lid. Shining the torch inside, all I could see was a murky green sludge. I rocked the jar a little. A pale object emerged through the surface and disappeared again. Impatient, I took down a larger jar. V9. I found a pair of tongs and dipped for the contents, bringing out something which looked like a severed tap root, covered in slime. As the slime drooled away I discerned rudimentary features carved into the mould, incredibly ghoulish in the torchlight. I took this as confirmation that the Verger was a member of the clergy.
A creepy feeling was crawling over my shoulders as I shifted a container the size of a larder keg and removed the lid. A soft doll rested inside, half-submerged in liquid. Flashing the torch around, I could see traces of the Verger’s sombre expression in its face. I dropped the torch, and daren’t reach in to fish it out.
Stumbling in the darkness I crashed through something, grabbing out for a handhold - the surface in front of me gave onto an unknown space. The Hall was wormholed with hidden anterooms, the blueprints resembling a Mandelbrot fractal. This one was narrow and carpeted with warm earth. Something glinted in the darkness.
This was not a horror movie - I reached aside and switched on the light. A large glass vat stood before me. Emerging from a fog of sediment was a fish-eyed Verger, frilled with drifting, ragged mycelium. The cowl had begun to emerge from its head, darkening and hooding over. Here was the last in a series of experimental, trial-run Vergers, each more complete and distinct than the last.
‘You’ve done it now, laughing boy,’ boomed a voice behind me.
‘Verger,’ I stammered, spinni
ng to face him. ‘Why aren’t you with the others?’
The Verger cast a wily eye at the pupa floating in the tank. ‘That’s why. Don’t worry, boy, I won’t bite.’
I hadn’t even known this was among the options.
‘Seat yourself on this pile of rats, boy, and I’ll explain everything – we’ve a very limited time.’
I sat down and glanced at the glass vat - the contents moved a slow arm and I heard a faint clink.
‘Well it’s the old, old story,’ the Verger began. ‘As you know, people generally delegate any real achievement to their offspring and so little is achieved in any one generation. Add to this the contamination of a million opinions it’s a wonder anyone does anything by their own impulse. Me and the line were devised to speed up the process unaffected by human concerns. All this cloak and scowl nonsense is just a bit of pretending, the simplest camouflage. We’re grown out of spores.’
‘I must say Verger you seem remarkably lighthearted about all this.’
‘D’you take a dim view?’
‘Well I don’t know. I don’t know, Verger, it’s alot to absorb - I mean you tell me you’re grown in a jar and then expect me to chuckle or something? Yes I suppose I do take a dim view. I won’t sleep soundly for weeks after this.’
‘It’s a shame, it really is.’
‘So when did this nightmare kick off? Who grew those jammy monsters out there?’
‘The prototypes? The real Verger - a hundred and fourteen years ago. Keen gardener. Here’s one of his botanical sketches, if you’re interested.’
He unrolled a scroll which portrayed the Verger’s head emerging from the gilled stipe of a bark fungus.
‘What sort of life span are we discussing?’ I asked, scrutinising the sketch.
‘Three months. Enough to outlive human curiosity but being inconspicuous isn’t all. The entire three months are spent seeding and growing the next Verger. Delegation again, you see - postponement. We all record and write instructions but it seems personal wisdom can only be learnt in the physical, not passively from a book. Each generation is as moronic as the last, a clean slate. Almost no cumulative knowledge.’ He smiled. His face imploded like a blown egg, releasing a little puff of dust. ‘Sorry you had to see this, laughing boy,’ he said through the mess of his face, then with a loud snap he collapsed like an articulated skeleton.
I prodded the still mass at my feet - it rustled like a sack of leaves. Enjoy your childhood, I thought, while you can.
The vat began to bubble and bump like an eggboiler. The new Verger was shifting its limbs in the swirling suspension, slow and blind. The plasma roiled as the creature reached a glistening hand over the edge of the tank. There was no lid. The new head arose from behind the glass. The film across its milky eyes broke, and it blinked at me. The caul over its mouth tore as the new Verger tried to speak. ‘Oh,’ it said.
‘Eh, Verger?’ I asked, unwrapping a new stick of gum.
The Verger squinted like a newborn. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘what a tangled web we weave.’
DEMOLITION
‘What do you mean by bringing this dog in here?’ stated Uncle Snapper with a compressed anger or perhaps fear, as Father entered followed by the skittering spaniel Nelson. The dog sat down, raised its eyebrows and regarded Snapper in a sarcastic pretence at wounded surprise.
It was pointless to pretend that Nelson was a normal hound. He was in the habit of smiling, laughing, or performing abrupt and eccentric dances. He would begin a sentence and stop as everyone turned. He sat upright in an armchair and read the morning paper, snapping it open and seeming to understand. He signalled the answers to complex arithmetical questions by biting Uncle Snapper to the appropriate count. Father stated that dogs like Nelson were part of life’s rich tapestry and Snapper remarked that if he spotted a dog like Nelson in a tapestry he’d publicly eat pure lard.
Anyway it all came to a head one afternoon when Snapper bounded up on both legs claiming that Nelson, who was sat nearby like a loaf of bread, had accused him of being a royalist.
‘This has gone far enough,’ shouted Professor Leap, and pointed at Nelson. ‘The number of delusions you’ve projected onto that poor hound it’s a wonder he hasn’t ignited like kindling under a laser. I’ll tell you how to prove whether this tormented animal speaks or not.’
Leap came up with the notion of attaching a voice-activated dictaphone to Nelson’s collar. If the mammal made a remark we would have proof positive of this phenomenon. Leap went ahead with the procedure and after a while the machine was removed and the results replayed as the household gathered to listen in sharp-eared and anxious silence. The recording began mundanely enough:
SNAPPER (shouting): Didn’t I tell you at fantastic expense I don’t care a straw for your opinions?
THE VERGER (shouting): And I know you’re a cocky, arrogant liar!
SNAPPER (shouting): You dare say that to my face?
THE VERGER (shouting): That’s where your ears and brain are housed unless I’m sadly mistaken!
FATHER (shouting): Not the drill, brother!
SNAPPER (shouting): I’ll kill him!
FATHER (shouting): Grab him, Cannon!
POOR MR CANNON (shouting): I’ll be dragged apart by lions before I’ll offer help [incoherent] obliterate all reason and kill [possibly ‘everyone’] each and every chance I get! All matter is localised in [sobs, a shriek]
SNAPPER (shouting): Get that bloody dog out of here!
FATHER (shouting): Snapper’s gone berserk, Cannon - put the dog out!
Amid further domesticities the back door was heard to slam, and here the tape took an unexpected turn. An unfamiliar voice was speaking, with only the peaceful hiss of trees as a background. The voice was almost inaudible, like a tiny child whispering into someone else’s ear. We strained to discern the words:
‘Once again I sit like an exhausted pimp at the doors of a Tangier whorehouse. How can these fools be used or forgiven. They laugh as everything of value is blasted beyond repair. Flinging objects and wasting my precious time. The so-called master and mistress - what a sham of a marriage. He at his drawingboard, dreading the hour she will slam out a meal from which all distinguishing marks have been removed. A chewed gauntlet, a challenge - identify this if you can. And he, an apparently sophisticated man, secretly eats wood to assuage his hunger. So ofcourse reason becomes a guilt-laced and occasional luxury. Leap has his skeleton professionally sharpened. Weeps with the aid of a stencil. Squeezes the world’s heart through his fingers like a flan. Knows as well as I do history’s a balloon-folder provoking jeers from the peanut gallery. Money’s elsewhere. Eye to the main chance. Eagerness personified. Rat up a drainpipe. Even when he thinks, he’s lying. Poor Mr Cannon - reckless dolt. Dares show his face in the village. Helix of social obligations. Bellows in the bar. Salty anecdotes concerning past embarrassments. Gored by a bull while standing aloof. Caught carmine-faced at bizarre crimes. Drinks like a king. Says he’s had enough when he crunches glass. Faces dawn like the Turin Shroud. Zinc-eyed in a ditch. Meek as a clubbed seal. Snapper though – there’s a fierce one. Man on a mission. Shaves with a blowlamp. Name’s a rash across the dynamite records. Ignorance run like a well-drilled army. Masturbates eleven times a day.’
Snapper went berserk and was wrestled immediately into a headlock. Adrienne was being discussed:
‘… playing Ophelia but on the quiet she manacles laughing boy to the bed and rides on his blank face - these so-called children are a mutant anomaly. There’s never been anything to stop laughing boy. It’s a tragedy he was ever allowed to take in the worldly snorkel of his thumb. His only speck of hope for salvation is embedded in the missing and hopelessly untraceable nose-tip of the Nile Sphinx. Nanny Jack - malevolently unresponsive. Paralysed on one side, boring on the other. No ambiguity there. The Verger. No more human than I am. Smoke inhabits his trousers. Very occasionally he opens his rolltop desk and releases a creature for exercise - a live trilobite the size of a tel
ephone. Fiddles its legs in the dim light. The only thing capable of making the Verger laugh - think about that. Burst - total dementia. Miracle he’s upright. Only man I know who can strut and whimper at the same time. Danger to himself and others. Corners children. Sinister and panting. Toothful grimace. Reads Wordsworth. Say no more. This place - a triumph over logic and syntax, funded by fraud and the threat of violence. Gargoyles screaming obscenities. God have mercy on us all.’
There was a brief pause, the sound of a door, and we were back in the kitchen:
THE VERGER (shouting): - wraps his gun in cashmere!
SNAPPER (shouting): I’ll kill you!
FATHER (shouting): Grab his legs, Cannon!
POOR MR CANNON (shouting): Minister for trade [inaudible] face like a trout [crashing noises] retribution –
Father pressed the off-button calmly. ‘Well there you have it, gentlemen - food for thought.’
‘Food for thought you bastard?’ said Snapper, incredulous. ‘It was the dog - talking. D’you propose to stand there pretending otherwise?’
‘All I heard was an unfamiliar voice giving the game away. Could have been any one of us, playing the fool.’
‘I recall that conversation,’ stated the Verger, ‘regarding Snap’s garbage-ridden existence. Poor Mr Cannon shoved the dog out but did not close the door correctly. Moments later Nelson re-entered and began staring again. These are the facts.’
‘Laughing boy’s window,’ Leap announced, looking me in the eye, ‘is directly above the kitchen door.’
‘Laughing boy!’ bellowed Snapper, grabbing me.
After five hours of futile denial, I was left tied to a tree near the lake. ‘Think on the anguish and trouble your childish trick has caused,’ ordered Leap as they departed. Standing there alone, all I could think of was how much I needed Adrienne to sit on my face. I had indeed been at my window when Nelson was standing below. I had whispered nothing, but had heard it all.
Now Nelson skittered over and took up a post a short distance away, watching my struggles and smiling in resolute silence.