The voice of Lancelot boomed up from the floor: ‘Are you speaking in tongues? Do you channel the dead?’
‘No, Lancelot. What I channel is the truth. The truth is what I have come to tell you about. I have come to put you on that white and lighted path. I have come to show you what might be found beyond the slough of dither and quandary. The truth is in reach of us all.’
A man leaned forward in his Zimmer frame and shouted: ‘Are you the New Bab?’ A man with a chicken-skin neck cried out: ‘Are you The Christ? Or a Christ-like saviour?’
Denny shook with what might have been laughter. ‘No, Freddy; no, Solomon. I am not the New Bab, or The Christ, or a Christ-like saviour. But I know of a saviour. He has gifted me the truth.’
‘Are you the ghost of Charles Taze Russell,’ someone called out, ‘finally delivered on that train?’
‘No! It’s me – Denny! Denny Logan. Look, will you just hear me out for two seconds while I talk to you about the truth?’
A feeling of dread flushed through every cell in Rickard’s body. He could not resist:
‘How can you know the truth when you do not have a head?’
Without turning to Rickard, Denny replied:
‘Because, Rickard, I still have a heart.’
Somebody else shouted: ‘If you know the truth, can you tell me what my first wife’s maiden name was?’
‘No, Benny,’ said Denny. ‘Because your first wife’s maiden name is a fact, it is not the truth. But if I had to guess, I would guess “Otway” or “Attleway”.’
‘You’re right, thereabouts!’ the man shouted back.
Another man shouted: ‘Can you tell me what the lucky playing card is that I always carry in my inside pocket?’
‘Again,’ said Denny, ‘I think you’re somewhat failing to grasp the meaning of “truth”.’
Somebody else called up: ‘I’ve just been up to the Whitney. Can you tell me what this whole “modern art” is about?’
‘Ah,’ said Denny, ‘now I’m on firmer ground. It’s about materials, it’s about context, it’s about subjectivity, and it’s about the nature of existence.’
The crowd swooned: faces turned to faces, nodding.
‘Does a pendulum swing always forward or always backward?’ somebody asked.
‘Always backwards, Mitchell,’ said Denny.
Rickard leaned forwards over the stone balustrade. ‘I have a question,’ he said, but was drowned out by the shouting of others.
‘Shush, men, for one moment,’ said Denny. ‘Rickard, I think you were fractionally first.’
‘Yes,’ said Rickard. He felt sure now that, with his question, he would call out the ‘truth seer’ for what he was: a puppet and proponent of Townsend Thoresen. ‘I have a question,’ he repeated.
Denny this time turned to face his questioner, and by doing so invited everyone else to look in Rickard’s direction.
Rickard, with his hands curling into paws on the stone sill, felt like a man in the dock. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can you tell all assembled here whether they should sell out to Puffball’s new CEO, with his offer of a crisp one billion dollars, or whether they should refuse him, and thus clear the way for Townsend Thoresen’s innovations to dominate the world?’
Slowly and stiffly Denny turned away from Rickard. The featureless face seemed solemn in its blankness.
‘I’m glad you’ve asked that question, Rickard,’ Denny began. ‘Because I was going to pronounce on that matter. I understand that the sale has already been agreed on, but the money and deeds have not changed hands. So there is still the possibility that you might be persuaded not to sell. How and ever, in truth – and the truth is all I can give – you would, as a collective, be crazy not to take the money. But, I suppose, you knew that already. I mean – one billion dollars! Take it and enjoy the rest of your lives, gentlemen!’
In astonishment Rickard ejaculated: ‘But what would your master say?’
‘My “master”, if you mean my spirit guide, my dictator of truth, is my equal,’ said Denny. ‘He can only be truthful too, so he would tell you the same as I have just told you. But in the earth-bound phase of his being he was a man who lived life to its lushest extent, so he would, in any case, say to you all: “Abú! Abú! We’re smelling of roses now, me garsoons!”’
‘That renowned ascetic Townsend Thoresen?!’ said Rickard. ‘It doesn’t sound like him. Come, come, now. Come out with it! What underhand business is afoot here?’
‘Townsend Thoresen?’ said Denny. ‘Do you think I’d heed a word from that entity? Only the one spirit brings the truth to me – the great John McCormack! It is him and I that are in communion. Now, men. As the man himself, while he was on this earth, might have proposed, what say that we dredge the cellars of all of their wines, before the new owners get their hands on them, and we’ll carouse for the rest of the day and into the next?’
***
By nightfall, the rooms and corridors of the clubhouse resembled scenes from Hogarth: ruddy-faced men, with their shirt collars loosened and shirt ends loose, and many with their ties tied around their heads, guzzling wine from goblets or straight from the bottle, and sliding down polished walls and slung like saddles across delicate items of furniture. Rickard skulked outside the saloon, sipping a port, absently nodding along to the man who had him buttonholed.
‘… no, never been to Ireland. Loch Ness, yes; London, yes; Paris, yes; Scotland, yes; Germany, yes – this all on the one tour thirty years ago – Belgium, yes; the Rhine, yes … But, yes, been at it secretly for this last year, apparently, this new chief, John Thomas. Laying down this cable. Gives him a trillionth-of-a-second advantage. Gives us a billion-dollar advantage! He talks about a universal brotherhood. You’ve got to wonder what the sisters will have to say about it …!’
From inside the saloon came the muffled sounds of revelry: laughter, the din of loud chatter, singing – singing; snatches of ‘Cogitations of My Fancy’ and ‘Bring the Boy Home’ and ‘Come Off It, Eileen’.
The door to the saloon opened a mite, and then wider. A man sidled out, tapping his pipe. Lifting his head, and adjusting his crossed eyes to Rickard and Rickard’s hostage-taker, he said, ‘Come on inside, for godsakes. There’s room for two more.’
Rickard entered to a happy hurly-burly. Denny was holding court at the bar, miming enthusiastic shapes to illustrate the words that his deadened face could not emphasise. His audience loved it – they were beetroot with giddiness, and falling about the place.
‘I mean – Cha Bum Kun! What kind of name is that anyway? Did anyone ever pause to think about that? Bum Kun! Bum Kun! Bum! Bum! Bum! Big bouncy wobbly veined Cha Bum Kun!’
He held a tumbler of brandy, and would at intervals splash some of it against his face, letting it dribble down and off his chin to even greater hysterics. Two policemen’s hats sat on the counter; Rory and Marky were still in tears, but tears of laughter now. Rickard had caught the eye of Marky, who tugged at the sleeve of Paulus, the two of them finding in Rickard’s appearance something funnier than even Denny had said.
‘Rickard Velililily – the devil himself,’ Denny suddenly called out – and at an instant, the high spirits of his drinking companions seemed to level off.
Paulus cleared his throat. ‘Rickard, have you started looking for work? Your residency is set to come to a close, you know.’
Denny answered, ‘Oh, he’ll have no problem, no problem at all finding work. Of a good many talents, is Rickard.’
He pushed through to him, and slid his arm around Rickard’s shoulders. Rickard thought he seemed taller, more correct of posture, than when he was alive, when he had had his own head.
‘Young man, I’m glad you’ve turned up. I’ll need the youngest, most physically able man in the building to assist me in something. I’ve been saying to the boys, there’s a crate of 1928 Chateau du Superior Vena Cava in the cellars somewhere, I know there is. Would you accompany me, please?’
They left the room
– and down the corridor, safely around a corner, amidst cooling shadows and creaking wood, Denny nuzzled his warm plastic face against Rickard’s ear; Rickard felt the plastic vibrate.
‘O the blather! O the guff! And it’s not as if I’m able to intoxicate myself through it. Get me away from here now.’
In the stair hall, he took the keys to the cellar from behind the porter’s desk. Under the first flight of the grand staircase, he pushed open the low iron door that led to the steps underground, put one foot over the threshold, and beckoned Rickard to his side again. Down the worn sandstone steps they went, into the vaulted catacombs. He pressed his fingers against the nobble between Rickard’s shoulder blades, encouraging him forward, saying ‘this way, this way’ as they moved among the racks and the dimly glinting bottle ends. Somewhere along the route he had detached a fire axe from a wall.
‘Any ideas where we might find this crate we’re looking for?’ said Rickard, his mouth dry and tasting the charnel air.
‘Over there,’ said Denny. He was holding the axe by the blade and pointing the handle towards an area of the floor.
‘Is it gone?’
‘No, no. Over there.’
Rickard moved to the spot that Denny was indicating, finding a flagstone apparently brushed clean of its covering of dust and with the grouting around its edges scraped out.
‘Lift it out for me, there’s a good lad,’ said Denny. ‘I chiselled at this all morning.’
With the thin end of the axe blade Rickard worked one side of the flagstone off the ground, then placed a bottle beneath the axe handle and levered it up some more. It was easy to lift out, being made of thin, rough-hewn slate. It was about a metre squared in area, and left a large tamped bed of sandy soil, with a hole in the centre, like the entrance to a fox’s den. Denny poked around with the axe, causing soil at the edges of the hole to fall away, making it wider. They stood opposite each other on the flagstones either side, looking down into the hole. Rickard blinked at the darkness, hoping for better resolution, searching for … he didn’t know. There was further movement of the soil. Two grey fluffy paws appeared, scrambling for purchase. A platypus – no, a dirty-faced shih-tzu – squirmed out of the ground. Another one, orangey-bearded, followed. The animals sniffed and snorted at the air, and beetled away, flattening their bodies to squeeze under a wine rack.
Rickard looked back at Denny, intending to express disbelief. The old man was holding out both his hands.
‘Help me in,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Help me down. Into the hole.’
‘Where does it lead?’
‘To Ireland. Eventually.’
‘Ireland?’
‘It leads to a fault in the schist, a crack, before that crack finally tapers to a close, into which emerges an undersea cable. The cable goes some fifty miles south, wraps three or four times around a spindle outside New York harbour, and then runs north-east until it reaches the south-west of Ireland. It’s composed of more or less the same material that human nerves are made of. I’ll find my way to that line, and feel my way home, along its length.’
‘You’ll drown!’
‘I won’t drown. I don’t have a mouth to drink with, let alone drown with.’
Denny’s hands felt very frail and cold in Rickard’s own, and his body light. He slipped into the ground diagonally, to his elbows, and stopped.
‘The axe,’ he said. ‘Pass it to me. I want to give this cable a few belts along the way, rightly mess it up.’
He took the weapon from Rickard, and slithered further into the hole, to his head.
‘Wait!’ said Rickard, to the white shining lump.
‘Yes?’ said Denny.
Rickard opened his mouth, but found he could not say anything. He was not sure what he wanted to say.
Denny remained motionless, waiting.
‘Rickard,’ he said. ‘Stay here in New York. You’ll have an important job to do. That voice. Your vibrato. Wonderful control in the upper to middle register. Look after it. There’s a truth in your voice such as is rarely found anywhere. You’ll change the hearts of men and women and make them human beings again.’
And with that, the head shot beneath the ground, as if the body had let go.
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