by Ashly Graham
Chapter Fourteen
The week following his hearthside humiliation, Father Fletcher chaired the quarterly meeting of the Parochial Church Council, which was held in the parish hall. When the co-opted curate failed to appear he went ahead and opened the meeting with a prayer, which he had written on the back of a grocery receipt and set amongst the Psalms of David.
‘As a young man, I behaved impulsively and without thought for the consequences. But now that I’m no longer a spring chicken, let me remember the days of my youth, the wine, the women and the song; and seek them out again. Again and again. Amen.’
The reverend began by announcing to the members, ex cathedra, that by hook or by crook he would bend this bothersome body to the yoke of his will. As priest-in-charge and Chairman, he was hereby notifying the Council that he would shortly be introducing a number of moral and other initiatives and measures in the name of Religion and the Lady of the Manor, the Patron of the parish, which would be recorded in the minutes as having been agreed nemine contradicente. One of these would be the sale by the Church of the parish hall, which it had owned since some time or other, for the purpose of whatever it was, the proceeds of which would go towards something or other.
Dark advised that he had recently informed Ophelia of his agenda at a meeting at the Old Rectory, and that she had most humbly acquiesced to be bound by his authority, as she was required to do. He said that she had wholeheartedly endorsed his reformatory programme and complimented him upon it, not that he cared what she thought because if she disagreed he would fire her.
There was an outcry of dissent. ‘I don’t believe it,’ said the senior warden, Mrs Bawtrey, when her number two, Mrs Patnode, had shouted the words in her ear. ‘Ophelia would never let anyone tell her what to do and how to behave.’
‘What this awful man is proposing,’ said another woman, ‘is a return to the Dark Ages, pun intended. The congregation’ll dwindle from packed every week to nothing if Ophelia goes, and the Bishop will close the place down. Young, adult, old, and dead, everyone adores Ophelia. The church is packed every week. Some people get married more than once, and my grandfather has just booked his fifth funeral.’
‘Ophelia!’ huffed Dark. ‘This isn’t a popularity contest. Case of being cruel to be unkind. Call me as dull as ditch-water, dry as a dust bowl or the dong on a dessicated dingbat, I don’t care. Can’t drop bomblets without busting heads. Cue labial laughter. Read them the Riot Act and rein in the rebels. But what the hell, I am an accommodating man. If you prefer beer or cocktails to wine at the altar, that’s fine by me. Hold services in the pub? By all means. Use the church for parties? Drive yourselves mad. Prefer hard rock to hymns? Go right ahead. Pardons and indulgences, they’re all worth the paper they’re written on, signed by me. Up to fifteen sins a week without points off your licence, granted. Guilt-free adultery on Wednesdays. I’ll even throw in manslaughter once every five years. Is there Any Other Business before I shut this charade down?’
The committee was implacable in its support of Ophelia. As the agenda proceeded, votes were taken and Dark went down on all counts, with the exception that he might take service occasionally, for the purpose of reminding everyone how unpleasant he was and afford people the entertainment of abusing him and pelting him with rotten tomatoes. He was also at liberty to do them all a favour by digging his own grave and jumping in it, whereupon the community would fill it in, and when he had decomposed disinter him and cast his bones on the village midden.
After the members of the council had filed out muttering to each other, preparatory to holding an even more vociferous caucus on the Street, Dark, left alone at the table, stabbed at the corpse of the agenda with a stubby forefinger and fumed.
‘Impossibly pedantic Protestant paedophiles!’ Then he stood and, according to his word, threw an illustrated children’s Bible that one of the churchwardens had left behind through the open window. A cat yowled, but it was not enough to restore his good humour.
In the morning he presented himself at the Old Rectory to account for himself. ‘Well, Dark, what have you got to say for yourself?’ The devil lady was tucking into a late breakfast, one that included everything except yogurt and muesli; which was a good thing, she thought as she learned of the debacle, because she might be about to lose them in a fit of projectile vomiting. ‘Remind me why I made the right decision in hiring you. So far you seem to have changed things for the better rather than worse, by uniting further those we are supposed to be disuniting.’
As he glared into the fire and pondered the response to the question that he had known would come, and the answer that had eluded him through the night, the reverend started. Either his mind was beginning to play tricks on him, which was quite possible, for he had not slept much, or he could see a number of bright-red demons with pitchforks dancing in the flames, surrounded by a lot of black imps. It was as if he were looking into Hell through the wrong end of a telescope. Dark rubbed his eyes, but when he stopped they were still there, like a streaming in miniature of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement.
In fact he was not imagining the figures. Alerted to trouble by the sneaking manservant, HQ had sent a platoon of demons to find out what, on earth, was going on that they had not been alerted to in the devil lady’s despatches. The demons were accompanied by as many imps as might be needed to bat to and fro between world and underworld conveying intelligence and instructions, with more on stand-by. The detachment was under orders to remain at the Old Rectory until further notice and report everything that happened for analysis. For the purpose of occupying the fireplace, which was now to be kept burning day and night because they had to remain red-hot in their element in order to function, the demons had scaled themselves down in size from their average height of ten feet, and their imps down from twenty-four inches.
Not all of them had arrived yet. The demons, whose journey had been delayed by Sunday engineering work on the antediluvian infernal rail transportation system following a night-shift fire-boarding new arrivals; though they were brandishing their weapons gamely, were all longing to lie down for a kip. The imps, being by nature irrepressible, were not so affected. There had been confusion over which demons were supposed to be going on the assignment, their tickets were made out wrongly, there was a shortage of train staff, and the public address system at Hell Central Railway Station kept sending them to the wrong platforms. The EarthShuttle, which ran as a Local from stop to stop within Hell and then Express to the surface, was not shuttling as it should. Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, who when dictator of Italy had distinguished himself by causing the trains to run on time, having been assigned that task in Hell had been stymied by the absence there of any system of temporal regulation, equating to Time’s earthly function as one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in the International System of Units, to use as a basis for setting the timetables.
The devil lady, who had been apprised of HQ’s fiat by an illiterate e-mail that came in after the first contingent of imps arrived, had no choice but to make the best of a bad job and put on a bold front. She was not going to acknowledge the demons in front of Dark—in fact she was resolved to ignore them altogether—or in any way indicate to him that she was aware of their presence. Dark looked down at the DL, where she was devouring a plate of anchovies on toast, and decided to believe that his eyes were deceiving him. ‘Ma’am, I undertook to subvert those scabs, screwballs and scumbags and I will. The devil I will.’
‘Damn you,’ she said automatically, placated more by salted Engraulidae than the assurance. She squeezed a wedge of lemon and sent the last tabascoed anchovy on brown buttered toast on its digestive route, poured her umpteenth cup of tea, and made up her mind. ‘Up the ante, Dark,’ she said loudly, ‘by sending a formal letter to Blondi-Tremolo on my letterhead. Use that skull-and-crossbones die on my desk to seal the envelope using the red wax stick. You’ll find a box of lucifers next to it.’
‘I will do as you say, ma’am, of course.’
‘The hell you will. Tell her that from now on we’re going to be all over her like June bugs on a peach.’
‘Er…ma’am?’
‘Like white on rice. Inform her that her arse will shortly be grass. That ere long she won’t know whether it’s Christmas or Tuesday.’
‘Ma’am, I believe Christmas does fall on a Tuesday this year. I looked it up because it’s a week I always take off.’
‘There are no holidays on this job, Darko. Sorry to disappoint you.’
The reverend was appalled. Christmas week was his favourite time of year, when he booked himself into a B&B run by a complaisant landlady in the coastal town of Helmston, and spent a week visiting the seaside fleshpots.
‘Jumping gerbils of Jehosaphat! Marinated muntjac! Shave me, Sheila, with a shard of…’
‘Dark.’
‘…sh…ma’am?’
‘Get out.’
Through the window the devil lady watched her peccant priest’s ovoid form scuttling down the drive. She tried to convince herself that she would soon get the upper hand, and discredit her manservant—damn the HQ bureaucrats to treble Hell for taking his word without allowing her the opportunity to refute his allegations before the team of spies was dispatched—so that HQ would order the demons back.
Surely, she thought, there was no reason for despondency or panic. These were early days, very early days, and there was as yet hardly any evidence to go on. She was still Lady of the Manor and in charge of operations, and the only failure to perform so far had been on the part of Dark, who, although as her surrogate she took responsibility for him, was still finding his feet. This ‘feat’, she thought, amused despite her vexation, owing to the size of his gut could only be accomplished when he was seated. The men of the village she believed to be under control, complaisant in their cups at the pub thanks to multiple tankards of ale…that little subversion of her early contrivance, judging from the size of the till receipts, was evidence that she had not lost her corruptive powers. It was only the women who were proving problematical: those monstrously mischievous Medusas and Boadiceas of bombast...the DL noted the inadvertent Darkisms with distaste…typified by Effie.
Pinball. That was what life was like, a game of pinball. Humans were the balls that got fired into the world, fast and blindly out of the chute, unendowed with strategy or skill, either blessed or accursed with Free Will. They ricocheted about, bouncing off this and that, sometimes hitting it lucky, sometimes not. Using the paddles of the earthly prostheses of their limbs, motivated by whatever instinct and ability was inherent in their genes and directed by their moral compasses, they flipped about in a bid for the mortal destiny of their choice. As they gambled with their lives they showed or developed greater or lesser degrees of proficiency; and for a while, so long as they were able to score additional turns, things went well enough. But as they aged and lost their former skills, and as their reflexes and reaction times slowed, unable to slow the game down, in their impatience and frustration and disillusionment and fatigue they began aiming for the least attainable spots, taking the longest shots, those where the rewards were highest and sweetest and quickest. In the long run winning was impossible…whatever winning meant, and the definition changed fast from coming out top, to middling, to fair, to anywhere above bottom. The odds were not in their favour, the struggle was unsustainable, the return on effort was ever diminishing. They were rising against gravity, swimming against the current, and ultimately the impulsion of strength and stamina failed.
Whereupon they disappeared down the Big Plug-Hole.
Upon being removed from the drain trap, helpless and exhausted, they were sorted and graded according to performance. If they failed to reach the level required to satisfy the examiners, or had flunked the test, they were sent to the adult borstal of Hell where there was nothing left to strive or wish for except to excel in the discharging of their punishment; where there was no right of appeal, no pity or Samaritan aid, no Father Christmas, and from which there was no redemption or salvation.
In the drawing-room, though the tongues of fire leaped in the grate and caressed their own, the devil lady shivered. As it went for those pinball players so had it once gone for her. These days it seemed that whatever she put her hands to she was all fingers and thumbs, and in the Dance of Death she had two left feet.
Chapter Fifteen
These conversations in the pub are remarkable
As examples of where the fresh waters of truth
Meet the salt of insincerity. “Fred? Oh,
I know Fred, Fred’s an exc’llent friend of mine!”
“Fred? Fred the money-grubbing, ambitious
Self-promoter, wife-beater and back-
Stabber; Fred the thief, liar, adulterer,
Coward, jealous husband, murderer in his heart,
Alcoholic-in-denial, patron of gents’ toilets
And contemplator of deviant sexual practices?
Fred the double-talking, bullying, conscience-
Free unbeliever in the need to wash your hands?”
“The very same. Good old Fred!
Fred’s a character, though, isn’t he?”
*
Upon the sudden and unexpected establishment of a contingent of demon spies in her drawing-room, for which she knew perfectly well that her manservant was responsible, once she had got over the initial shock, the devil lady became increasingly discomposed by knowledge of the surveillance and suspicion that she was now under in the home that she had taken so much trouble to make as comfortable and congenial in atmosphere as possible. She felt as though she were no longer mistress in her own house. Nothing like this had ever happened in London.
That her servant, who was a low-ranking demon himself and one of the intruders’ ilk, was in and out of her presence all day made the situation almost unbearable, especially since although he was undoubtedly responsible for the intrusion she could not confront him with his disloyalty, let alone dismiss him. As guilty as the man was, he was immune to accusation, castigation, or punishment for his duplicitous action. She knew that he knew that she knew, but there was not a damn thing she could do about it. Hauling him over the coals was not an option, and even if it was, for a denizen of in Hell this would be like getting a massage.
Then the devil lady was cheered by an idea that would not only serve to get the man out of the house, for a short while, but prove that she was making headway in her latest assignment—furnishing evidence that her servant would be professionally bound to report to HQ and perhaps give the bureaucrats cause to consider whether it had been too quick to take the word of her underling before committing valuable resources to evaluating her performance. She would send him to conduct an on-site review of an enterprise that was already an unqualified success: the pub.
What confirmed the DL in her opinion that this was an inspired notion was that it was impossible for her to do the task herself. Ladies of the Manor did not belly up to the bar of hostelries; and even if they did, in addition to compromising her image as an aloof aristocrat, people would clam up in her presence and she would be unable to determine to what degree they had been confounded in iniquity. Further, it was the only place that men were at liberty to boast and show off, however bogusly, in the classless enclave of a stag environment where they were safe in the knowledge that the hinds or does were not around to jeer at them.
The devil lady’s manservant, suspecting nothing, was as delighted with the assignment as any man would be whose wife turned to him and said, “Honey, you need to unwind. Why don’t you go down for a few drinks with your mates at The Smuggler’s Rest? It’ll do you good. I won’t wait up so take a key. There’s money in my purse if you need it.”
So, after spending some time boning up on the subject of inns, taverns and public houses in general, and their function in promoting a dysfunctional society¾for once there was someone at the Help Desk at the Infocentre who was able to send him the information right away¾that night at a quarte
r to six the manservant set off to the pub, which was not called The Smuggler’s Rest. The DL’s suggestion to Hob of The Headless Woman (“Let’s see, you’ll need a new name for the place, Smuggler’s Rest is too corny. I suggest The Headless Woman, as in ‘Here is a woman who’s lost her head, |She’s quiet now—you see she’s dead’. You could have a sign made of a decapitated female.”) had not gone down in such a small feminocentric village, except as an unmanly whispered “See you at the Silent.”
When he arrived at the pub, which is all it was referred to as, there being none other within five miles, although it was only just after opening time the place was already full of people. After he had gotten as close to the bar as he could but failed to catch the eye of one of three busy barmen by waving a five-pound note, and then a ten-pound note, and then a twenty, the manservant noted that none of the locals or regular patrons had to do more than raise a finger to get served. But at last when everyone else had been attended to, including all those who had come in after him, he had the attention of one of the servers.
Anxious not to lose his opportunity, he gabbled his order. ‘Good evening, barkeep. I’d like to order as many pints of your best bitter as will be sufficient in one of my body mass and tolerance for alcohol to cause, after I get home, assuming I get home, room-spinning nausea followed by throwing up followed by a few hours of restless sleep interrupted by nightmares followed by loss of bladder control followed by sleepnessness followed by a crashing three-day hangover and headache and inducement of enough self-loathing for me to go on the wagon forswearing all spirits, wine, and beer for ever or until tomorrow evening whichever the sooner. I hereby undertake not to cause a disturbance of the peace while on the premises, punch or insult anyone, and if I break a glass I will pay for it. I may become somewhat garrulous and loud, but I promise you will have no reason to ask me to leave or have me thrown out. How much will that be, please? I have as much cash on me as may be required.’