by Rhys Hughes
Once, in a coaching house near Salisbury, Darktree dropped a tankard of porter. In the dark puddle that spread out on the stone floor, he caught his own reflection. At first he thought the scar that crested his right eyebrow had jumped sides. Astonishment!
Another amusing incident: in Abergavenny, Darktree helped a lame beggar to a tavern and bought him a meal and a drink. Later, away from the town, passing beneath the purple scrub and blasted peak of Ysgyryd Fawr, he realised who the lame beggar was. Tom Jackstraw, his arch rival.
Yes, Darktree loves the mountains. Sitting atop Sugar Loaf at dawn, counting the clouds, dreaming about travelling to even more distant regions. He has heard that they are asking for settlers in the antipodes. Will he go? There are forms to be filled in, proof of identity, passage to be paid. And where will he find muffins among the men who walk upside-down? On the snowy slopes of the Southern Alps?
Occasionally, on the road, Darktree meets kindred spirits, bundled up tight like parcels, some of them with newfangled guns that require no flint. They will exchange news, opinions, snippets of philosophy and general laments concerning the weather and lack of traffic. Sometimes there is a mutual hold-up, a great joke.
‘Good morning, sir! Whither bound?’
‘To Halifax, for the fair. Pockets to be picked, stalls to be rifled.’
‘Watch the gibbet, sir. Halifax is no place for the unwary.’
‘I am Robin Darktree, no mere amateur!’
One day, Darktree reads about a new invention in a newspaper abandoned on the highway. The invention is a type of steam carriage that can carry passengers on rails. Darktree frowns. He cannot grasp this notion. The paper is several years out of date. What does this mean? That the roads are being forsaken? Impossible!
This story colours his idle thoughts for weeks to come. He tries to picture the diabolical machine, surely all clashing cymbals and roaring furnaces. And who will blow the post-horn at 18 m.p.h.? Absurd. He will not have it. He wrests the image from his mind. He regards the smoking bowl of his pipe with deep suspicion. The roads are the arteries of the country, the nation will bleed dry.
Another encounter, this time in the depths of the recently enclosed New Forest. A strange man without a periwig: Darktree more cautious than usual. A trifle sombre perhaps, impatient, a mixture of inappropriate emotions.
‘Good day to you, sir! A fine day for travelling.’
‘Indeed so. And I to Exeter before its end.’
‘I see. And will you be taking the train, sir?’
Darktree scowls. ‘Train? What is this train? I have no inkling of what you are talking about.’
But finally he can avoid the truth no longer. On the outskirts of Bath he comes across a pair of iron bars stretching into infinity in both directions. Stubborn as flint, he waits by their side. When the train eventually passes, what do the passengers see? An archaic figure mounted on a decrepit horse, a living ghost of sorts, an echo. And Darktree? A steam humbug.
When Darktree waits in the bushes for the Holyhead mail, he reaches into his pocket for his bag of ginger biscuits. But his fingers chance instead upon a locket. Lovingly, with a dirty fingernail, he flips open the lid of this locket. A lock of auburn hair, the hair of Lucy Reeves from Epsom, curled tight like the spring of a wheel-lock musket.
He wants to settle down, but how do you arrest the motion of a boulder rolling down a hillside? No, this is a pitiful metaphor. Darktree is less a boulder than a sack of gestures, hurled through the air by some gargantuan catapult. No woman will ever be able to catch him before he lands, or piece him together afterwards, not even Lucy. He will continue as he is, boiling soup on a fire struck from tinder, using saltpetre as seasoning, washing his feet in icy springs, collecting blackberries in his spare tricorne hat.
The laws of the land are changing. Men are no longer hung for poaching rabbits. Darktree is lost. He wanders the empty, rutted roads, leading his roan by the bridle, mud on his fine boots. Perhaps it is time for him to visit his mother again, up in Lancashire. Perhaps he will keep going. Do they have trains in Scotland? He doubts this. He prays.
Yes, times are hard. And when they hung Nick, he muses, they also hung me. After all this time perhaps they have realised this. Perhaps that is why they no longer send hired hands after me. A chilling speculation.
When Darktree is loading his pistols, cleaning his blunderbuss, sharpening his rapier, he whistles a favourite melody. But the notes sound more and more unconvincing, as if his lungs and throat have lost confidence. His flatulent roan salutes the rising moon. Should he hang up his black silk handkerchief on a nearby branch? Bury the adjuncts of his life in the soft loam? What memorials would they make to the spirit of a dying age? Is not the road itself his epitaph?
At a toll-booth in Rutland, Darktree tips his hat at the long-faced collector, paying his fare as would any honest fellow.
‘See you again, when I return this way.’
‘Not I, sir. The toll-booth is closing. Few use the roads these days. Locomotives are all the rage now.’
‘Closing? But who will pay for the upkeep of the highways?’
There is no answer to this, and the long-faced collector merely shrugs. When Darktree returns that way, a fortnight later, the toll-booth has been dismantled. He considers desperate measures. Could he actually hold up an iron monstrosity? What words would he use?
Darktree firing his blunderbuss at a speeding train: by the time the flint has sparked and ignited the charge, the train has gone. The shot tumbles to the ground like dice. Darktree firing his blunderbuss at a swooping seagull: another miss. Darktree in the depths of winter, trudging through snow while the smoky black silhouettes cross the horizon, a frosty rime on his cloak: cold.
During the festive season he retires to a cave in the Malvern Hills. Here, for what it is worth, he keeps many of those stolen items that have caught his fancy. A bronze candelabrum, green with age; a miniature portrait of a beautiful, sullen child; an ormolu clock without hands. On Christmas Eve, he dances with himself in the middle of the cave, utterly silent, candles throwing his long shadow over the irregular walls. But it is not home.
He decides to visit his mother after all. So he covers over the mouth of his cave with parts of dead trees and turns towards the north. He is wearing the scarf she knitted him all those years ago, as a passport back into her heart.
At last, an hour after sunset, he encounters a coach.
‘Stand and deliver! Hands up and valuables down!’
‘Really, my good man, this is most old-fashioned. You are an anachronism, are you not?’
‘Anachronism you say? And who might you be?’
‘My name is Davies and I am a surveyor.’
‘A surveyor? And what, pray, do you survey? Parrots? Plums? Boats that ply the Bristol Channel? Puddings, lanterns, old ropes? Walnuts? Come now, you must be more specific.’
‘Very well. I am a surveyor for Great Western and I am travelling to Llandrindod Wells to map the area for a new railway line,’
‘In that case you must come with me. The other passengers may proceed on their way.’
‘This is ridiculous. You are already little more than a folk-memory. In ten years’ time the question of your existence will be purely academic. The roads are dying, soon they will be gone forever. People will race back and forth, from one city to another, on rails alone. The future rides on wheels of iron!’
‘No more! I can bear no more talk of the steam humbug!’
Darktree has never been a vicious highwayman, he has little taste for blood. But sometimes there is no avoiding it. Yes, he is a fisher who has over-exploited the resources of the bay. Now it is his turn to be a fish; the lines of the net that will catch him are being woven all around.
Darktree’s favourite watering-hole is a small white-washed tavern near the town of Flint. Here he can, for an hour at least, wipe clean his rusty blade and pretend that nothing has changed. He is still a man of the world, after all, and his actions must st
ill have some bearing on events in general. This thought cheers him a little: he is easily cheered.
Darktree’s favourite game, in the white-washed tavern near Flint, is solitaire. He lays the cards out on the table before him and frowns at them with sober intensity. It is wise to maintain a sober intensity when playing solitaire. Often, when no-one is looking, he cheats. At other times, to preclude a sense of false security, he deliberately loses. Either way, it is a game best played in the evenings, in a dark corner, with a single glass of sweet ale.
Velocity Oranges
The Cheating-Box
When Thomas was a bicycle, he used to talk to me from the depths of a dusty garage. Sucking on my pipe, I would grunt with primeval delicacy and attempt to match my facial expressions to the alarming profundity of his words. It was a cluttered garage, full of rusty garden tools and abandoned matchstick models. And Thomas was a cluttered bicycle, bristling with bells, water-flasks and unusable pumps. He could make me laugh with the ungainly honk of his decaying rubber horn. We were rather more than just good friends. Often I would try to mount him from behind.
But this romantic idyll was not to last. One wintry evening, as I groped my way through the garage with a broken hurricane-lamp, I saw that he had packed his basket and was preparing to leave. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ I cried. ‘Is there someone else?’ He blushed crimson, but his hasty denials fell at my feet like greasy pennies. At last he told me the truth. He had met a young bicycle mechanic who could work wonders with a spanner. He blew me a metallic kiss and explained that he was tired of being a bicycle. He wanted to be converted into a Tank-Engine.
I was distraught and collapsed in a pool of tears, but he ignored me and wobbled off into the night. Many hours later, when I had recovered my senses, I said to myself: ‘What is a Tank-Engine?’ I was confused. I assumed that it was merely an engine used to drive tanks. I had visions of Thomas struggling to propel a caterpillar-tracked monstrosity over the dunes of a beach made dishonest with barbed wire. I saw him trailing loops of this mutant seaweed back to the cold ocean; I did not know the mundane truth.
I consoled myself by spending all my spare time inventing other unusual devices. Chief among these was the Cheating-Box, a cuboid that could not exist in our Universe. I donated most of my creations to Uncle Miasma, my next-door neighbour. Eventually we became firm friends and when my house burned down in a terrible conflagration caused by a mordant experiment with banana skins and cigarette papers, I moved in with him.
Incest and Morris-Dancing
Uncle Miasma was a pale, thin individual with a perpetual stoop and a diseased mouse-fur coat. His house was dominated by a lush and overgrown rainforest roof-garden whose immense weight had seriously weakened the building’s foundations. Here, high above the city, he would fiddle with the controls of a radio-telescope whose dish revolved out of the artificial jungle like a coin at the end of its spin. I had designed the instrument for him as a birthday present; he was determined to be the very first person to receive the interstellar transmissions that any given alien civilisation might care to send.
Accordingly, he began spending more and more time in isolation, amid the squawkings of parrots and the hissings of tree-snakes. And before long, I grew lonely again. Desperate for company, I would often climb up the wrought-iron spiral staircase and peer at him through the quartz windows of his observatory. Whenever he left his monitors to urinate in the undergrowth, I would clasp his arm and try to engage him in conversation. ‘What do you use for sexual relief up here?’ I would demand, but he merely shook his head and stared at me with uncomprehending eyes.
One afternoon I received the answer to my question. I caught Uncle Miasma writhing on the cold floor of the observatory, stark naked, the Cheating-Box on his head. Enraged, I burst through the door and challenged him. My clothes were stained with the juices of huge dripping tropical ferns and monstrous orchids. He froze at once, but then offered me a wry smile. He held up the Cheating-Box thoughtfully. ‘You should try everything once,’ he explained. ‘Except two things,’ he added, after a little more thought.
Multifoiled Ether Orgones
So I decided to create another companion. I made a clockwork man who marched off into the night when my back was turned: very ugly, very wise. His name was Wilson. This did not seem to be the route to choose, so instead I arranged a huge furnace in the basement, heated by a large supply of coal taken from the prehistoric roof garden and prepared various retorts and crucibles. I resolved to attempt the True Great Work: the germination of a genuine androgynous figure. I was growing increasingly frustrated. Unlike Uncle Miasma, I derived little sexual pleasure from the Cheating-Box. Uncle Miasma now completely refused to come down from his observatory. He lived by eating wild fruits and the brains of green monkeys. In my imagination, I slowly shook my fists at the angry stars, the aerial that was their impotent lover and my own sweet smelling sexual organs. Weeks passed. I stoked the furnace. It was almost ready. Then there was a knock on the front door.
Jurassic Multi-Storey Car Park
An American traveller was standing on the threshold, asking if I could put him up in a polite Bostonian voice. I gazed at his firm body with greedy eyes, seeing an Ivy League Apollo aflame with a hot doughnut in each hand. I licked my lips and ushered him in. I took his coat and pressed him down into an uncomfortable chair, like a swollen cork into a swan necked bottle. The bulge in my trousers was more than a little noticeable: though not large, it protruded at right-angles to my pelvis. Heavy with clotted blood, it could not rise to a meaningful position.
The traveller explained that his name was Mark and that he was a dancer in a thoroughly modern, arty dance company. He had chosen to take a couple of weeks off work to visit those parts of the country he had always wanted to see. Unfortunately, he had lost his troupe and was now thoroughly miserable. I did not sympathise too much. I rubbed my warty face with my hairy palm. I told him that he was welcome but that I had some bad habits. I chew my toenails, for example, and scratch my behind with a toasting-fork. He answered that he did not mind, so I offered him a mug of phlegm and then sauntered into the kitchen.
When I returned, he was leafing through a coffee-table book of Escher’s illustrations. I gave him the steaming mug and stood back to gain an overall view. He was very nervous. He admitted that he admired Escher’s optical illusions very much. ‘Ever since I was a lad I’ve tried to recreate his work for real,’ I said. The American looked surprised. ‘Really?’ he asked. Unsure of whether or not I was joking he attempted a giggle. Snots ran down his chin. His dark eyelashes fluttered.
Approaching, I turned the page for him and rested an ivory finger on a picture entitled ‘Belvedere’. The matrix of the woodcut was the same as that of the Cheating-Box: an impossible cuboid. ‘Can you really build something like that?’ he inquired, greatly disturbed. I nodded again, but he frowned and traced the edges of the drawing in disbelief. The whorls of the print defined the parameters of a new reality. ‘And yet what would happen if a car crashed into such a structure?’
A Good Bicycle is just a Bicycle, but a Stilton is a Cheese
I resisted the temptation to molest the American and returned to my furious basement, where the flames of Hell were heating my due process. Alembics and Philosophical Eggs bubbled and hissed at me. I poked my tongue out in return and dreamed of fellatio and my old bicycle. Such things would be as nothing when the Great Work was complete: Hermes and Aphrodite joined as one, like a dividing amoeba in reverse, like the point of contact between hammer and anvil, time and motion, energy and despair. Both moulded from various mystic essences that I shall not divulge here. A true divine Androgyne that I could ride for hours, ringing as many bells as I desired on the way.
Anyway, my due process was rapidly becoming a growing concern. After much prodding and urging, my divine Hermaphrodite popped out like a tumour from an incised pus-sac. I danced a vast dance and clapped my hands, gurgling like a poisoned brook. Covered in pseudo-amn
iotic fluid, my star-begotten child writhed and howled a melodious sine-wave of a cry. I smacked its bottom and it winked at me, expanding into full maturity even as I watched. But the mix had not been perfect. Instead of a matchless blend, my Androgyne was a piebald, with a male upper lip, a female lower lip and a shadow that tasted of salt. I scratched my head.
‘Let me see,’ I said, as I consulted my arcane books and obscure manuscripts. I flicked through a tome compiled by Basil Valentine but soon discarded it in favour of a Paracelsus. ‘Not enough tabasco!’ I cried, beating my forehead in despair with the volume in an exotic and unusual rhythm. I braided my wax moustaches into whips. I coughed and belched. I grimaced and picked my nose. I knew that I could repair the mistake easily enough, by returning my creation to the furnace and adding the required deficit of Mexican flavouring. But I took the opportunity to vent an unfocused anger, breaking flasks and beakers and stamping my club-foot. Indeed, I was so angry that the mirrors in the basement closed their eyes and refused to show me that my Hermaphrodite had disappeared.
Strawberry Breast Milkshake
When I turned around, my mouth dropped open. I grimaced and chewed my tongue, a muscle already so drained of blood by constant biting that it resembled an ancient flatworm. I rushed up the stairs after my wayward masterpiece. By the time I reached the top, my ears were assailed by a curious cacophony of grunts, squeals, honks, groans and the snap of elastic followed by a yelp. Then there was a rapid series of heavy slaps and a deep moan of satisfaction. I lurched forward and discovered the American playing Eve to my flawed Adam. He was smoking a cigarette and trembling, while the object of his passion unpeeled slowly to fleshy shreds. I yelled and waved my arms and tried to scratch at his eyes with my nails. But I had long since bitten them to nothing.