by Heide Goody
He let the letterbox shut with a snap.
Chapter 8 – in which Clovenhoof hosts a dinner party, lets something slip and starts a small fire
Jeremy Clovenhoof requests your presence for a Candlelit Soirée on the evening of June the Fourteenth.
Bring a guest.
Drinks from 7:30pm
To be followed by a Modest Supper
RSVP
A few hours after pushing the invitations through the doors of flats 2B and 3, Clovenhoof was pleased to get two responses. One came on lavender scented notepaper.
Jeremy, delighted to attend, Nerys. x.
The other came written on the back of a takeaway menu.
Thanks mate, I’ll be there. Haven’t got a guest though, hope that’s OK, Ben.
Clovenhoof was helping Manpreet to embalm the corpse of Mr Dienermann. Helping at the moment really meant turning the body when he was told to, and helping to wash it down. Manpreet was adamant that Clovenhoof would need to watch the embalming procedure quite a few times before he could attempt it himself, but Clovenhoof thought it looked pretty simple. Basically, it involved swapping the blood in the body with an arterial solution. All you had to do was insert the cannula into an artery and make sure that there weren’t any holes in the corpse that would spring a leak. Then the machine pumped things around and did the rest.
“Will it be Findus Crispy Pancakes?” smirked Manpreet.
“What?”
“On your dinner party menu.”
“I haven’t really worked out the menu yet. What sort of thing would people eat at a dinner party?”
“You haven’t got a menu yet? I thought you said it was tomorrow. Do you want to do the eyelids?”
Clovenhoof packed cotton wool under Mr Dienermann’s eyelids to counter the shrinking of the eyes.
“Not too much,” warned Manpreet.
“Okay, okay.”
“He’s not supposed to look like a frog, you know.”
Clovenhoof adjusted his work and Manpreet nodded approval.
“Anyway,” said Clovenhoof. “The dinner’s tomorrow. No problem, I can go shopping later.”
“Go shopping later?” Manpreet was spluttering.
“What’s wrong with that?”
Manpreet poked Mr Dienermann’s cheek as the active dyes in the fluid returned some colour to the man’s flesh.
“Tell me. Why is it that you’re having this dinner party? You want to impress someone?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“Thought so.”
“I want to show them all that I can behave properly, and I want them all to realise that Blenda and I are a couple, and, well you know...“
“You want to impress them.” Manpreet shook his head as he worked on Mr Dienermann’s jaw to fasten it shut. “Well, you need to try harder. If you’re going to invite people round for a dinner party, you need to be giving them the very best that there is. I know quite a bit about food you know, and it can take me weeks to plan a dinner party. You have to source things.”
“Is that like buying them?”
“Yes, but it means it’s harder. That’s the point. Let me think. Come and hold his head steady.” Manpreet made a small incision in Mr Dienermann’s neck and plumbed in the machine. “At the very least you need to make everything yourself. Have you even made the spun-sugar baskets to showcase your dessert?”
Clovenhoof shook his head in confusion
“You might be looking at an all-nighter if you want to get them just right,” said Manpreet. “You’ll need fresh berries for garnish. Make sure they’re local.”
“Why?”
“Oh, lots of people worry about food miles. If you want to impress people then make sure your ingredients are locally sourced where you can. There’s a pick-your-own farm at Bassetts Pole, you could get there and back in a few hours. That leaves main course. Have you got any vegetarians, or people with allergies?”
“What?”
“You know, people who can’t eat certain foods.”
“No,” lied Clovenhoof. He had no idea.
“That’s easier then. You might want to think about some fish on your menu. People like it because it’s healthy and it can make a stunning visual impact. You could have made a bouillabaisse, but I’m not sure you’d get the conger eel and the scorpion fish at such short notice. Oh, if you serve fish, try and get some samphire.”
“What’s samphire?”
“It’s a plant that grows on the sea shore.”
“Well that’s not going to be local then,” said Clovenhoof. ”Sutton Coldfield’s as far from the sea as you can get in this country.”
“Ah but it’s in season. You get points for seasonal too. See?”
Clovenhoof didn’t see. He was going to need some help.
“If they don’t have it here, it doesn’t exist,” said Ben.
Clovenhoof pushed the trolley while Ben nodded appreciatively at Waitrose’s array of groceries.
“Oh yeah. This is the place for posh food. Look at that, a whole row of shelves with different types of olive oil.”
“Will I need some of that?” Clovenhoof asked.
“Probably,” Ben said, “all upscale cooking’s done with olive oil.”
“What’s wrong with lard?”
“I don’t know. But it’s wrong.”
“Have you got a guest to bring with you tomorrow?”
“I don’t have anyone I can bring.”
“You must know someone.”
Ben laughed mirthlessly.
“The only people I know are men, and I don’t think any of them would last all through a meal in the company of strangers before they fainted or wet themselves.”
Clovenhoof looked at Ben in disbelief.
“Okay. Well, get a prostitute then.”
“Jeremy! I’m not coming if you’re going to be like that.”
“I’ll book one for you if you like.”
Ben stopped in the aisle.
“Look,” he said testily. “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m on my lunch hour.”
“I’ve got to get this stuff.”
“Then we’ll ask for help.”
Clovenhoof stopped a shelf-stacker with a left breast called Barbara.
“Where do I find the samphire?” he said.
“Sorry?” she said.
“Samphire.”
Shelf-stacker Barbara looked uncertain, and then a smile lit her face.
“You mean saffron? A spice?”
“No, it’s a plant that grows by the sea.”
“Plants are by the entrance, with cut flowers.”
“Er no. You eat it.”
Various uncertain expressions played across her face like clouds over a hillside.
“No,” she said eventually. “I don’t think we have that.”
Clovenhoof sighed and crossed it off his list.
“OK, what about scorpion fish and conger eel?”
“Well, they’d be on the fish counter if they’re anywhere,” Barbara ventured.
“If? So will they be there?” said Clovenhoof.
“They might be.”
“But will they?”
“They don’t sound very familiar to me. I don’t think we stock them. The fish market in Birmingham’s the place if you want unusual fish. Try there.”
Clovenhoof left Barbara with his torn-up list raining down on her like confetti as he stormed from the shop. Ben ran to catch up.
Back in Book’s ‘n’ Bobs bookshop, Clovenhoof added another volume to the pile of cookery books he had made on the counter.
The Bloodthirsty Bullfighter’s Book of Spanish Cookery appealed to him because there was a close-up of a large angry bull on the front.
He searched the shelves for a book about cooking fish. Got Any Crabs On Yer, Cock? caught his eye. It was a publication commissioned by an eel and pie shop in London back in the seventies. He flipped through it, noting with pleasure that it contained many line drawings showing
the correct ways to take a whole fish and reduce it to edible chunks.
He added Cocktails: a Man’s Guide by Richard Harris to the pile and slid them over to Ben.
“Can I borrow these? I only want them until the dinner party’s over.”
“No,” said Ben. “This isn’t a library.”
“You’re right. Libraries have people in them.”
Ben looked up at his empty bookshop.
“Okay. If you bring them back in the same condition, I’ll refund you what you paid, minus a pound.”
“Deal,” said Clovenhoof, resolving to smear bogies on the middle pages before he brought them back.
The fish market by the Birmingham Bullring was much more interesting than Clovenhoof had expected.
He found someone selling live prawns. He knew from the cookbook that they were to be dropped into boiling water to cook. He couldn’t miss an opportunity like that. He bought a large bag and sighed with pleasure.
He asked about conger eel, and was pointed to a stall that had one. He was brought up short when he saw it. Around eight feet long, with teeth that he knew would show no mercy. He’d enjoyed the ghoulish tales from the cookbook that described how a severed conger eel head had been known to bite off the arm of an unwary fisherman. Seeing it in the flesh, even though it was dead, filled him with admiration. He knew he could not cook this magnificent creature. He wanted to remember it as he saw it, arranged on ice, teeth bared at passers-by. He already had a pet in Herbert, but if asked about an ideal pet, he decided that a conger eel would be in the running. He turned on his heel and went away to re-plan his menu.
In the taxi home, Clovenhoof considered his successful mission and the still unfulfilled needs of his menu.
Unusual. Locally sourced. Clovenhoof’s mind turned over the possibilities. He’d obviously have to be creative with just a few short hours to go. He had an idea about the star dish. Something that his guests would never have tasted before. He got out his pen and started to jot down ideas.
His mind though stayed with the fish in the market. He loved the look of them, laid out in ice. Some of the gaping mouths looked like souls in torment, which made him smile in recollection. There were, he admitted, still aspects of Hell he missed. He’d been proud of the work that they did there.
Michael flipped through the report as he and Satan walked on through the bowels of Hell.
“You can say what you like about them, those OFHEL guys are thorough. Look at this, they took the temperature from the lake of fire, in three different places. They sent out five hundred surveys to the damned to grade the level of suffering that they received. Mind you, it says that they only got back seventy of them. Why’s that?”
“Oh, the others got eaten or burned up, I should imagine,” Satan replied. “But a grade of ‘improving’ is good, right?”
“It shows we’re doing the right things. I mean look at the entrance now. Can’t believe it’s the same place, can you?”
They watched the slick, multi-lane turnstiles, each manned by a pair of well-trained demons who jabbed at each person with a slickly orchestrated routine as they checked the computerised roster and showed them where to go.
“And the bridge over the Styx,” added Satan. It had become one of his favourite places, with the views it offered.
“Yes, it’s very efficient,” agreed Michael, “but I’m rather keen to see the college, can we go and do the tour now?”
The Infernal College of Demon Training was the newest initiative, and promised every employee of Hell a personalised development programme.
They started the tour in one of the gym blocks, where an instructor was taking a class in Basic Pitchfork Techniques.
“Most of this is about control and stamina,” Satan whispered to Michael as they watched. “You’ll see that they barely pick up their pitchforks for the first few lessons. Frustrates the young ones like you wouldn’t believe.”
It was an inspiring sight to see forty young demons, perfectly synchronised, as they lunged forwards with a cry of “Hah!”
They moved on, and entered a laboratory.
“I think you’ll be impressed with this,” said Satan. “It’s dedicated to the Infernal Innovation Programme. Let me introduce you to our head of research and development, Belphegor.
Michael shook the hand of the wizened demon sat in an elaborate wheelchair.
“So you’re the brains of this enterprise?” Michael asked.
Belphegor cackled and pushed a large lever, which made his wheelchair lurch forwards in a noisy and jerky way.
“If I was the brains, I probably wouldn’t have got in the way of the bone-crusher that we used to make the foundations for this place.”
“The foundations are made from bones?” Michael asked.
“The foundations, the walls, even the roof tiles. One of the areas we’ve had to develop most rapidly is the re-use of existing assets. If someone’s a level seven damned, we use them for projects like this. It ensures that they don’t run the risk of accidentally having any fun, and we save a fortune on materials.”
“Can I ask, does your wheelchair run on clockwork?” said Michael.
“What a question! Oh dear me no. Clockwork’s terribly old-fashioned, you know. This is steam-powered. My assistants will add more fuel every few hours.”
Michael suddenly had an idea as to what the fuel might be and walked on in silence.
“We’ve got some exciting new developments for the humble pitchfork over here,” said Belphegor. “It’s a demon’s hardest working asset, and we’re trying to find ways to make them more efficient and durable. Replaceable tips are something that I’m certain will be popular. A demon wants reliable sharpness in his pitchfork. Hah! This one’s fun. Do you want to pick up that pen, sir?”
He indicated to Michael, who picked up the pen.
“It looks very much like any ordinary pen. Now would you click the top please?”
Michael held it at arm’s length as he clicked the top and the pen was somehow transformed into a lightweight pitchfork. He put it down hurriedly.
“Yes, very good. Very…innovative.”
“Now, one of the goals of the Infernal Innovation Programme is to reduce the cost and time taken for quality torment of our clients. We’ve built a number of prototypes, which we’re assessing in the lab. Would you like to see those?”
Michael nodded, not at all sure that he did. They followed Belphegor’s wheelchair as it made its erratic, zigzagging way down a corridor, and emerged onto a gantry that looked across an enormous workshop.
The eye was drawn to the closest apparatus. It had the form of a huge wheel. There were people strapped to the outside of the wheel, their bottoms exposed. Inside the wheel, enthusiastic demons jogged continually, causing it to turn on its axle. As the wheel rotated, demons stationed on platforms around the outside wielded their pitchforks on the exposed bottoms. As they watched, a whistle was blown and the apparatus was stopped.
“What are they doing now?” Michael asked.
“Every fifteen minutes we take assessments of the level of torment. We measure this very scientifically. If we make some minor adjustments, we need to know how they are ultimately impacting the client experience.”
Sure enough, a demon with a clipboard had a brief interchange with each human and circled a value on his sheet.
“What’s that thing over there?” Michael asked, pointing at a large tunnel-like structure.
Belphegor smiled proudly.
“We’re prototyping ways for the Lake of Fire experience to be delivered in a more efficient way. So that is our walk-through fire-wash. Burners on all sides ensure that clients can move through at speeds of up to three miles an hour and still be thoroughly charred.”
“It’ll never replace the real Lake of Fire,” Satan said, “but it will enable the recovery of its delicate ecosystem, in time.”
Michael gave a weak smile.
They said goodbye to Belphegor and moved onto the
second floor of the college. There were smaller meeting rooms and classrooms off a long corridor.
“I thought we’d drop in on a performance management meeting.” Satan said, “One of the senior demons, Toadpipe is reviewing Gutterscum. He’s been underperforming. It’s important that they follow the process, so we’ll just sit quietly at the back and observe.”
They entered the room in silence and took chairs at the back. Toadpipe and Gutterscum sat at either side of a table. Both had a copy of the review document. Toadpipe scanned through his copy, checking details. Gutterscum gnawed the corner of his copy, his eyes darting about nervously.
Toadpipe cleared his throat.
“Gutterscum, we’ve met before to talk about your performance, in fact I will record the fact that this is our twentieth meeting.”
He made a note.
“So let’s talk about the targets that you’ve been working towards. The first page of the document that you have there is the agreement that you signed when we set your objectives. You agreed at that time that you accepted the targets we came up with.”
“You said I had to sign it,” Gutterscum mumbled.
“Yes,” said Toadpipe, glancing briefly at Satan and Michael. “I said that we needed to agree and we both had to sign to say so. We set you targets that were challenging but achievable. Let’s take the first one. Torment to achieve levels of misery of grade five or higher. I have here the documented evidence that shows that your average level of torment is graded at misery level two.”
“I work in the Pit of Masochists. They don’t get miserable. They love being tormented,” Gutterscum complained.
“You have similar working conditions to many other demons,” Toadpipe said.
“But my victims can be really difficult! They try to trick me into giving them extra punishments.”
“Clients, not victims. Remember that you had behavioural training to equip you with the correct language. It’s important to remember that we’re providing a service. Shall we move on to the next measure? Rate of torment will not drop below twenty clients every hour. We all know that this is an important measure, as it ensures that there is an optimum period of recovery and anticipation between intense periods of torment. The CIA provided us with lots of research for the optimisation that we’ve implemented. The records here show that your average rate of torment is eighteen clients per hour.”