by Paul Sussman
Now, however, suddenly and for no obvious reason, I have become dissatisfied with these white spaces. It hit me late last night, as I closed the front door after yet another abortive attempt to catch the elusive knocker. As I walked back across the foyer I flicked on the light for a quick peek at my handiwork, and was immediately struck by how odd it looked to have those thick blocks of emptiness hovering in the midst of my narrative. I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cheap 40 watt bulb – in daylight I hadn’t noticed any problem – or whether my judgement had been affected by the trauma of the banging, but I wasn’t at all happy with it, and remain unhappy now, as I write. It looks incomplete and unprofessional, and I shall have to do something about it. Precisely what, however, I don’t know. I’ll keep you informed.
Now, I really must be getting on. My pink felt-tip is all but exhausted, and at the end of this paragraph I shall be dispensing with it altogether and taking up the first of my two red pens. The red should look extremely effective, especially against the white of the castle walls.
Onwards, onwards.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PRINCE ODUDUWA IWE Ogunmola, known to his Cambridge colleagues as Prince Gummy-Molars, both as a pun upon his last name and for the exceptional brilliance of his teeth, is unique amongst my victims for a number of reasons. He was, for starters, the only royal person I’ve ever killed. Also the only black one. Most significantly, his murder is the only one in which I had associates. Usually I do my killing alone. In this case, however, it was a group effort. Not that that diminishes my culpability in the whole affair. It was, after all, me who actually sprung the catapult.
Emily, bless her heart, got me into Cambridge, albeit indirectly. Prior to her departure for America, you see, I had never been much good academically. It wasn’t that I was stupid, just that I was far too busy thinking about my golden-haired playmate to bother much with anything as trivial as schoolwork. ‘Slothful and distracted,’ my termly reports would declare bleakly. ‘Lives in a fantasy world.’ ‘Bottom of the class again.’ ‘A dreamer.’
Then, however, Emily disappeared and I suddenly began applying myself. Not because I felt I had something to prove, you understand, but simply because I had nothing else to do. In Latin and maths and Greek and history I sought refuge from the enormity of my aloneness. She turned me into a swot. Or rather, her absence turned me into a swot. That’s the extraordinary thing about Emily. She’s even more influential when she’s not there than she is when she is, if you get my meaning.
With my darling off the scene I gained a place at a good public school in Sussex, where I toiled diligently for five years until the summer of 1917 when, following an excellent showing in my Higher Certificate exams, I landed an open scholarship in classics to St John’s College, Cambridge. Emily, of course, knew nothing of this, although if she had I think she would have been quite proud of me.
I went up to St John’s in the October of that year, and was sent down 20 months later. If I got into Cambridge because of Emily, I got out purely on my own demerits. I am not, after all, totally reliant upon her.
St John’s is, in my humble opinion, the most profoundly beautiful of all Cambridge colleges. Obviously, I’m biased, since I was, albeit briefly, a student there. Even without my partisan ties, however, I would still come to the same conclusion. From its magnificent arched sixteenth-century gateway a succession of red-bricked quadrangles march back towards the Cam, across whose lugubrious green-brown flow a Bridge of Sighs leaps effortlessly into New Court beyond. Gardens and lawns sweep away to the north of the college, whilst about the whole there rests an air of tranquillity and repose quite at odds with the fact that it was home to over 200 undergraduates and nearly as many dons and college servants. My abiding impression of the place is of its extreme, one might even say deathly, silence, which given the state of world affairs at the time, is perhaps not entirely surprising.
My first year in college was an uneventful one. I was assigned rooms in Third Court, on the ground floor, backing directly on to the Cam, and from the word go immersed myself in my studies. Each morning I would attend lectures and tutorials, whilst each afternoon would be spent in private study in the college library. I joined the Cambridge antiquarian and classical societies, won prizes for my Greek verse composition, and was widely praised for my translation of Ovid’s ‘On Facial Treatments for Ladies’ (if there are any ladies reading, by the way, try smothering your cheeks in Libyan barley and raw eggs – guaranteed to smooth away those niggling morning wrinkles). I even stayed in college throughout the long vac of 1918 researching a brief paper entitled ‘Aristophanes: The Comedy of Life’, a copy of which is, so far as I’m aware, still available from the college library.
Studying consumed most of my energies during that first year, and I left myself time for few other activities. I dined each night in hall and played a little lawn tennis, but with the exception of attending meetings of the antiquarian and classical societies I had no social life to speak of. There was certainly nothing in my early university career to hint at the debauchery to follow.
Work and society meetings aside, the only other interesting thing that happened at that time – or rather didn’t happen – was that I wasn’t sent to France to fight in the First World War. The latter had, of course, been raging since 1914, and I should, by rights, have been called up to serve as soon as I reached my 18th birthday. Early in January 1918 I did indeed receive a summons to attend an army medical board. On the designated morning, however, I woke to discover my entire body was, quite inexplicably, covered from head to foot in a livid, crumbling rash of eczema. The medical officer took one look at me and pronounced me wholly unfit for service, either abroad or at home. Whilst my fellow countrymen were getting their heads blown off in the trenches of Flanders, therefore, I was safely ensconced in St John’s College library, my nose thrust into a copy of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. The inexplicable eczema disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and has never afflicted me since. I shall always be grateful to it, however. Murderer I might be, but I’ve never had the least desire to fight in a war.
Thus my first year at Cambridge passed; quietly, studiously, introvertedly. The Pill I kept in a small silver snuff-box which Mrs Eggs, our housekeeper, had given me by way of congratulations on achieving my open scholarship, whilst The Photo I always carried in the breast pocket of my jacket.
By the time I embarked upon my second year – in the October of 1918 – I was regarded as one of the college’s most promising undergraduates and was being widely tipped for a position as a future fellow. Then, however, I met Meaty, and things went badly off the rails.
Maximilian Heaty, only son of minor Tory politician Earl Heaty of Gosport, was a renowned college rogue. Avoiding conscription on account of his flat feet, he waged his own war in Cambridge against the restrictions of college life. Meaty’s instincts gravitated towards misbehaviour as surely as a plant’s leaves turn towards light, and so frequent were his visits to Reverend Creed, the dean, that he eventually took up rooms directly above the latter’s office so as to save himself a journey whenever he was summoned thereto, which he was on a weekly basis. Had his family not been fabulously wealthy he would have been sent down long since. As it was, they were fabulously wealthy, so that rather than punishing Meaty for his misdemeanours the college instead sent his father lists of rare volumes that were wanted for its book collection. By dint of having the worst behaved pupil in Cambridge, St John’s also boasted the city’s finest library.
I had seen Meaty on numerous occasions during my first year – usually face down in the middle of a quadrangle – but had never actually spoken to him. All that changed, however, on the night of Monday, 11th November 1918, the night the First World War ended, the night I was kidnapped.
I had spent the evening by the fireside perusing my Plato – in the original Greek, naturally – and had retired to bed early, lulled to sleep by the distant sounds of Armistice-night revelry. How Meaty and
his friend Pepper got into my room, I’ve no idea, but I suddenly woke to discover them standing beside my bed, one wearing a pirate hat, the other cricket whites and a fez. They were both drunk, and smelt strongly of cigars.
‘What is this!’ I cried, sitting up. ‘Who are you?’
‘Wepwesentatives of His Majesty’s Government,’ said the one in the pirate hat, lisping his ‘r’s outrageously. In the pale moonlight I could see it was Meaty. ‘Department of Jolly Japes. We’ve been sent to wescue you. Top Secwet. Don’t make a sound.’
Whereupon the two of them stepped forward and, before I had time to protest, thrust a large sack over my head.
‘Get off me!’ I cried. ‘Let me alone, I say!’
‘Now, now, dear boy!’ admonished Meaty. ‘Don’t be so obstweperous. It’s all for your own good. Give me a hand here, Pepper.’
‘What a wheeze!’ cried Pepper, his voice high-pitched and querulous. ‘I feel like the Scarlet Pimpernel!’
I was bundled out of bed and across the room – struggling violently all the way – and then, to my horror, was lifted bodily from the floor and thrust out of the window. For a moment I thought they were intent on drowning me, for the window gave directly on to the river Cam. As I was pushed out, however, I felt myself grasped by other, gentler hands and, after much pulling and wriggling, tumbled forwards into the bottom of a punt, the latter rocking violently with all the commotion. Meaty and Pepper clambered out after me and, once I had been manoeuvred into a seat, the sack still over my head, we pushed off upstream.
‘I can see his dickie,’ giggled a woman’s voice.
I was, as you can imagine, none too pleased at such rough handling, and made my displeasure known in no uncertain terms. My threats to report them all to the dean, however, were greeted with cheers and laughter, whilst my demands to be put ashore elicited nothing but a loud raspberry from Pepper. Eventually I lapsed into a sultry silence, huddling in my seat with arms around my legs whilst my kidnappers chattered and laughed all around me. The sporadic pop of champagne corks suggested they were making quite a party of it. Someone kept stroking my knee.
We’d been on the water for some ten minutes when a voice I’d not yet heard – a deep, booming, cavernous voice, like the rumble of a distant explosion – suddenly declared:
‘Unsack the prisoner! Show me his face!’
Whereupon, with a cry of ‘The Gummy has spoken! Let all who hear obey!’, the sack was whisked from my head and my surroundings revealed.
We were by that point on the stretch of river that flows behind King’s College, the shadowy mass of whose chapel loomed against the night sky away to my left. Facing me, his arm draped around the shoulder of a buxom, red-haired woman, and still wearing his pirate hat, lounged Meaty, whilst behind me stood Pepper, who was doing the punting. Beside me sat a rather attractive blonde-haired woman, her hand resting on my knee.
The person who really caught my attention, however, and who was clearly the possessor of the deep, booming voice, reclined on a leopard-skin rug at the prow-end of the punt, a fluted champagne glass in one hand and a fly-whisk in the other. From the floor at his feet a shuttered hurricane lamp cast a ghostly beam of light in which his prodigiously lipped black face glowed like a large tropical fruit. He had jug-ears and exceedingly white teeth.
‘What do you weckon, Gummy,’ cried Meaty. ‘A marvellous specimen of Homo Pyjamaclad, eh, what!’
Prince Gummy-Molars, for he it was, said nothing, merely downed his champagne and swished his fly-whisk nonchalantly back and forth. The blonde-haired woman whispered: ‘His dickie’s huge!’ before collapsing in giggles.
‘Now look here,’ I snapped, crossing my legs, ‘what is all this? What do you chaps want with me?’
‘I’ve alweady told you, dear boy,’ chided Meaty. ‘We’ve been sent to wescue you.’
‘Wescue . . . Rescue me from what?’
‘Fwom what?’ lisped my abductor, all wide eyes and mock-amazement. ‘From borwingness, of course. From howwible, fwightful, dweadful, terminal borwingness. Across the land men and women are celebwating the utter destwuction of the Hun, and there are you, lonely as a dodo, all tucked up in bed, borwing as borwing can be. It’s simply not to be countenanced!’
‘What I do in the privacy of my own bedroom is my business and nobody else’s,’ I responded angrily. ‘And if I want to sleep, that’s what I’ll jolly well do.’
‘Of course it is!’ cried Meaty. ‘I’m not saying don’t sleep. I’m just saying all things in modewation. There are times to sleep, to whit duwing lectures and sermons, and times to wassail, to whit now. And we’d better jolly well get on with it. We’ve a dozen bottles to get through yet.’
He pulled a magnum of champagne from a large ice-bucket, popped the cork and poured a glass, handing it across to me.
‘Have some bubbles, old boy. Take the chill off the night.’
‘I don’t want anything to drink,’ I said. ‘I want to be put ashore.’
Meaty shook his head and tutted.
‘I’m lost for words! Such ingwatitude. And after we wisked life and limb to bwing you here as well. What should we do with him, Pwince Gummy?’
The prince leaned forward and prodded my crotch with his whisk.
‘Off with his testicles!’ he boomed.
I downed the glass in one.
‘That’s the spiwit!’ laughed Meaty. ‘I say, Gummy, you weally are the life and soul of the party.’
He refilled my glass and clinked his own against it.
‘May the blessings of Bacchus be upon you!’ he cried.
I downed this second glass, and a third, and a fourth, and several more after that, on each occasion urged on by a booming ‘Off with his testicles!’ from Gummy, so that by the time we slipped out of Cambridge into the silent water meadows beyond I was feeling distinctly light-headed and, despite my best efforts not to, beginning to have rather a good time. It got even better when the blonde-haired woman clambered on to my lap. I’d never had a woman on my lap before, and tried not to move lest she decided to get off again.
‘Are you really a prince?’ I asked Gummy-Molars as the lights of town dropped away behind us.
‘Of course he is!’ cried Meaty, who’d taken over the punting duties from Pepper. ‘He’s Pwince of the Kikiwe, aren’t you, Gummy?’
By way of an answer Gummy raised his left buttock slightly and farted.
‘Good God, what a frightful stench,’ trilled Pepper. ‘Too many mangoes, old boy.’
‘Daddy’s one of the wichest men in Afwica, isn’t he?’ continued Meaty. ‘More gold than he knows what to do with.’
‘My lineage is mighty,’ admitted Gummy, before noticing my glass was empty and roaring, ‘Off with the testicles!’
‘And will you be king one day?’ inquired the buxom red-haired woman. ‘Will all that gold be yours?’
‘I am the eldest,’ said Gummy. ‘It is my destiny.’
The redhead leaned forward and whispered something in the blonde girl’s ear, the two of them bursting into giggles.
‘I suppose you’ll be wanting a wife when you’re king, won’t you?’ cooed the redhead, resuming her seat and batting her eyelids at Gummy. ‘Someone to spend all that lovely gold on.’
Gummy shrugged and worked his finger around the inside of his right nostril, withdrawing it for closer examination under the light of the hurricane lamp.
‘I shall take many wives,’ he said, turning his glistening finger backwards and forwards. ‘Perhaps 20. Perhaps more.’
‘I don’t know where you get the energy,’ cackled the blonde girl.
‘They’ve got potions!’ yelped Pepper. ‘Jungle fuck potions. Isn’t that right, Gummy? Keep you going all night.’
‘I say!’ cried Meaty. ‘I could do with a bit of that!’
‘You certainly could,’ said the redhead.
Meaty and Pepper exchanged punting duties again, Meaty sinking on to the seat beside me and, rather to my disappointm
ent, yanking the blonde-haired girl on to his own lap. I downed another couple of glasses of champagne and accepted a cigarette from Gummy, the first time I’d ever smoked. It made me cough.
‘When you’re king, Gummy, old fwuit, you’ve got to pwomise to make me your pwime minister,’ said Meaty.
‘Top hole,’ laughed Pepper. ‘And I shall be captain of the guard!’
‘And I’ll be court jester!’ I cried, getting into the spirit of things.
Gummy began delving into his nose again, the left nostril this time, working his finger in almost up to the knuckle. The blonde girl began tickling my ribs with her foot. I mustered as much courage as I could, and winked at her. She dissolved into giggles.
‘When I am king,’ said Gummy, ‘I shall . . .’
He paused, thinking.
‘Yes?’ said Pepper.
‘. . . be a great king.’
We all applauded.
‘So you shall, Gummy, old boy,’ said Meaty. ‘You shall be a vewitable Afwican potentate.’
‘I shall have 200 motor cars,’ continued Gummy, removing his glistening finger and wagging it at us, ‘and many aeroplanes. And battleships!’
‘Those are no good,’ said Pepper. ‘Your country’s landlocked.’
‘Battleships!’ roared Gummy. ‘Hundreds of them. And I shall have more gold than my father. More gold than any ruler in Africa. Than any ruler in the world. Mountains of gold!’
‘Sounds all right to me!’ bawled the red-haired woman. ‘Are you sure you’re not looking for a wife?’
‘When I am king,’ cried Gummy, warming to his subject, ‘I shall have my own motor-racing track, and a palace with toilets you can sit on, and many servants to do my bidding, and beautiful wives! Dozens of beautiful wives!’
Waving his fly-whisk above his head, he struggled to his feet, setting the punt rocking violently.
‘When I am king of the Kikiwe I shall build golf courses,’ he boomed, ‘and restaurants, and ice-skating rinks, and caviar!’