Colvenhoof: Satan's Shorts (Clovenhoof Anthology)
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Satan's Shorts
Heide Goody & Iain Grant
Pigeon Park Press
‘Satan's Shorts’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2014
The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9927034-3-1
Published by Pigeon Park Press
www.pigeonparkpress.com
If you’ve not read Clovenhoof before…
The one-handed man writhed in the chunky armchair as he struggled to find the words to express himself. Waiting patiently for him to find those words, Denise silently chided herself for regarding him once again as ‘the one-handed man’. Mr Dewsbury was much more than his outer appearance. Her role as a person-centred therapist – as Sutton Coldfield’s eminent person-centred therapist - was to see the bigger picture, see the whole person.
Well, not the whole person in Mr Dewsbury’s case. What was he? Ninety-five percent whole? Ninety-seven? How much was a hand, percentage-wise?
“The devil is living in my flat,” said Mr Dewsbury.
Five percent? Three? A hand might be important but it’s not that big.
Mr Dewsbury coughed loudly.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Denise blinked and then smiled.
“Sorry, I was thinking about what you said before.”
Mr Dewsbury frowned.
“I didn’t say anything before.”
“No. But what did you say just then?”
“The devil is living in my flat.”
“There’s a devil in your flat.”
“Not a devil. The devil. Satan. Beelzebub. Lucifer.”
“Oh, and do you see him in your flat?”
“No. I don’t see him there.”
“He’s just a presence, is he? A feeling?”
“No, I don’t see him because I don’t live there anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because he does. He moved in last year. There’s only one bedroom. We’re not… you know. We don’t… cohabit.”
“And this is the devil, is it?” she asked.
Mr Dewsbury nodded vigorously.
“Satan,” he said.
“Beelzebub.”
“Lucifer.”
She nodded in a reassuring manner she had practised in front of the mirror.
“Do tell me, Mr Dewsbury, why is Satan living in Birmingham? I mean it’s a lovely place but…”
“He lost his job.”
“As the devil?”
“As ruler of Hell. And then he was evicted.”
“Right. And so he chose to relocate to the West Midlands.”
“No,” scowled Mr Dewsbury. “He was sent here.”
“Why here?”
Mr Dewsbury sighed and jiggled his head.
“I may have suggested it to the archangels.”
“Oh, so you see angels too?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “You see, I used to be dead.”
“But you’re not now, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” he said grumpily. “I was happy in heaven.”
“I hear it’s nice.”
“Are you mocking me?”
Denise shook her head gently.
“I do not mock my clients, Mr Dewsbury. I’m here to support you through this situation.”
“Okay,” he said, mildly mollified. “I was dead. I wasn’t using my flat at the time. I thought it ideal. And, besides, Satan and my old neighbours…”
“What is it, Mr Dewsbury?”
“Well, frankly, they deserve each other. The man across the hall, Ben Kitchen, is a weirdo.”
“Weirdo?”
“A grown man, spending all his time cooped up with his computers and his little toy soldiers when he’s not slobbing about that so-called bookshop of his. Not married, you know. I’d assume he was a poofter but at least the gays have the decency to iron their shirts and run a hoover round the place every now and then. And the woman upstairs…”
“You don’t get on with one another?”
“Nerys Thomas has so many men coming in and out of her flat that she ought to install a turnstile. No sense of decency or shame that woman.”
Denise, who had her own views of homosexuality, decency and a woman’s right to live how she damn well pleased, kept her thoughts and emotions hidden.
“And these two people have Satan for a neighbour.”
“Yes. Well, he goes by the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof these days. His secret identity.”
“So, he’s just an ordinary man to look at, is he?”
“No!” said Mr Dewsbury with fresh venom. “He’s got the horns, the hooves, the red skin, the lot.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Don’t people notice this? Aren’t they surprised?”
“They don’t notice!” squeaked Mr Dewsbury, a frantic edge entering his voice and his eyes. “They can’t see it!”
“So everyone else thinks he’s just a man.”
“Everyone except the barman at the Boldmere Oak.”
“What?” said Denise.
“Lennox the barman. He knows.”
“How come he can tell that Jeremy Clovenhoof is Satan when no one else can?”
“I don’t know!” squealed Mr Dewsbury. “I’m not making this up!”
“Of course not,” said Denise in soothing tones.
Mr Dewsbury buried his head into his one hand and sobbed softly.
“What am I to do?”
Denise picked up her personal planner from the coffee table.
“I think we need to book another session,” she said.
Mr Dewsbury looked at her from between his fingers.
“Probably quite a few,” she said, giving him a little smile.
Clovenhoof goes to Night School
Ben, Nerys and Clovenhoof met on the steps of the Paradise Adult Education Centre, their breath misting in the chill night air.
Clovenhoof gazed at the orange sodium glare of the street lights on Paradise Street and tried to pretend, unsuccessfully, that he was gazing at the cleansing fires of the Old Place.
“Well, that was a load of bollocks,” he said with quiet sincerity.
“What are you talking about?” said Nerys, opening her handbag to look for her car keys. “I thought there was a lot on offer there. Art, languages, computing. Although I’ll tell you what, that woman should not be allowed to teach yoga.”
“I enjoyed the yoga,” said Clovenhoof. “Very relaxing.”
“Yeah, a bit too relaxed, Jeremy. Certain muscles should always remain clenched.”
“Better out than in,” said Clovenhoof and cracked his knuckles.
“What was wrong with the yoga instructor?” asked Ben.
“Cellulite,” said Nerys. “More orange peel than the fake fruit that Jeremy tried to eat.”
“And why,” said Ben, turning to Clovenhoof, “was this evening a load of… rubbish?”
“I was mis-sold, time and again.” He counted his grievances off on his fingers. “First of all, it was supposed to be a night-school taster session. I didn’t get to eat anything. That wax fruit! What the hell is that about? And the art dude had the nerve to be upset with me. Secondly, the pottery woman tells us we’re going to throw pots and gets all shirty when I do. And book-keeping!”
“I might sign up for the book-keeping,” said Ben. “A bit of a refresher, like.”
“Now, you know it doesn’t mean-“
“It’s almost as bad as that bookmaker’s on the high street. They don’t make any! I used to pop in every day just to see if I could catch them at it. Not that I’m allowed in there anymore.”
“Why not?”
“The 3:15 at Market Rasen last month. A horse called My Face. I got over-excited. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re too wound up. That’s your problem,” said Nerys still ferreting around for her keys.
“I signed up for the meditation course,” Clovenhoof agreed.
“You?” said Ben. “Meditation?”
“You don’t think I can handle a meditation course?”
“I don’t think meditation can handle you, my friend.”
“I thought you were going to go for something more… academic,” said Nerys. “Isn’t that why we came here? All those educational supplies you came home with the other day. We talked. Remember?”
Clovenhoof made a noise in his throat. Yes, he had returned to the flat with reams of notepaper, three folders, an academic diary and a Hello Kitty stationery kit. Yes, Nerys had seen them and then she had talked. And talked. And produced an Adult Education prospectus from somewhere. Clovenhoof didn’t get a word in edgeways at any point, and did not have time to regale her with the tale of his trip to the stationers which featured a long queue, boredom, an electric pencil sharpener that gave the patently false impression of being custom-made for sharpening dull horns, an unexpected electrical fault, a broken till, some shouting and Clovenhoof running out with anything he could lay his hands on, leaving the stationer with as much money as he felt he owed her (seventy-three pence and an old betting slip).
“I think I’m a bit beyond the need for schooling,” said Clovenhoof witheringly.
“Oh, we can all do with a little self-improvement,” said Ben.
“Not me.” Clovenhoof puffed out his chest and tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. “When He made me, He broke the mould. One of a kind.”
“Got them!” declared Nerys, victoriously holding the car keys aloft.
“Oh! And another thing!” said Clovenhoof, returning to an earlier theme as they walked towards the car. “Knight school? I didn’t see a sword or scrap of plate armour anywhere.”
“Now you’re being silly,” said Ben. “Although, thinking about it, I’d sign up for a class like that.”
He drew an imaginary sword from an equally imaginary scabbard with a metallic “Shing!”
“You’d be gutted in an instant,” said Clovenhoof, drawing his own pretend blade.
“Really, boys?” said Nerys. “Here? In public?”
“Fear not, fair maiden,” declared Clovenhoof. “It will be over in but a mo-”
Clovenhoof, drawing his arm back to deliver a skull-cleaving blow, punched a passerby cleanly in the jaw. The bearded fellow went down hard on the tarmac.
“See, that’s what happens when you behave like idiots,” said Nerys.
Clovenhoof looked down at the felled man. Ben offered the man a hand.
“You all right, sir?”
Clutching his jaw, the man furiously waved the hand away and, through his pain, growled, “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo!”
“What did he say?” asked Ben.
“He… politely declines your offer of assistance,” said Clovenhoof.
“He looks like he might need first aid,” said Nerys hopefully.
The man got to his feet and staggered away, moaning and swearing under his breath.
“Home then,” said Nerys, mildly disappointed that she didn’t get a chance to showcase her first aid skills.
“Do I have to sit in the back again?” said Ben.
“I did call shotgun,” said Clovenhoof.
“When?”
“Then.”
“Well, can we at least take the child lock off the back door?”
At night school the following week, Nerys found herself regretting signing up for the ‘painting from life’ class.
The art teacher, Patty, a large woman who at least had the decency to hide her calorific sins beneath a paint-spattered artist’s smock, had set the dozen-or-so students the uninspiring task of sketching plants and fruit. Nerys had been given a square of cardboard, a selection of pencils and a tiny cactus.
She stared at it for a long time.
“Thinking of how to approach it?” said Patty.
“It’s a bloody cactus. I’m not sure why I’d want to draw it.”
“It’s a challenge, isn’t it?” said Patty. “Very difficult to convey.”
Ben, who had signed up for the same class, seemed unaccountably content with drawing an apple. He bent over his work, pencil moving intermittently yet confidently across the card. There was a look of passionate concentration on his face that Nerys felt a mere apple did not deserve.
She stared at her cactus again. Fine, she thought.
She sketched the pot first, oval upon oval, joined by vertical lines. It was a bit wobbly but would suffice. She drew the outline of the cactus and then stopped to appraise what she had committed to paper. It looked less like a cactus than a cucumber or an inexplicably potted sausage. In an attempt to make good this disturbing image, she quickly pencilled in the cactus’s spines. It was not an improvement. It looked like a hairy cucumber now.
“Cocks!” she said under her breath and turned her cardboard over.
Through two sets of windows, Nerys could see into an empty classroom across the corridor where a tall houseplant with dark waxy leaves stood.
“Now, that’s a proper plant,” she said.
“Hmm?” said Ben not looking up.
She looked at his drawing. With light shading and a bit a thumb-smudging, he’d somehow managed to convey the roundness of the fruit, its sheen and luscious swell.
“Nothing, apple-boy,” she said, hopping off her stool and out of the door.
The other classroom door was unlocked and she slipped inside. It was a science classroom with rows of high benches studded with gas taps. In one corner, a range of plants and glass tanks clustered beneath a mural of a rainforest. The plant she had spotted from afar was a good two feet tall, its leaves fat and firm.
Smiling at her own good taste, Nerys gripped the plant pot and slid it off the work surface. It was heavy and she grunted as she took its weight in her hands.
From the biggest tank a large snake with mottled brown scales watched her.
“I’m only borrowing it,” she told the snake.
The snake’s tongue flicked out for an instant but it passed no further comment.
With leaves in her eyes and the awkward weight of the plant straining her fingertips, Nerys backed out into the classroom, across the corridor and pushed the next door open with her back. She turned and, through the foliage, saw that she had wandered into the wrong classroom.
“Oh,” she said and put the houseplant down on the edge of a desk.
Eight pairs of eyes were on her, middle-aged men and women sat expectantly at the rows of the desks set before the whiteboard. There was no lecturer at the front of the room.
“Teacher not here?” she said as she tried to blow some life back into her fingertips.
A thickset man at the back made a displeased noise and another said, “I heard Dr Wiles was attacked in the car park last week.”
“Someone dislocated his jaw, I heard,” piped up a woman in an unflattering cardigan.
Nerys frowned.
“Bald bloke? Scruffy beard? Swears in Latin?”
“That’s him,” said cardigan woman.
“I think I’ve met him,” said Nerys.
“So are you our replacement for the evening?” said a man.
“We’ve been waiting for half an hour,” said cardigan woman.
The thickset man made another noise of displeasure.
&n
bsp; A bespectacled man at the front laughed lightly.
“I don’t think this young woman knows much about classical languages,” he said. “No offence meant, child.”
“Child?” Nerys cleared her throat. “And what’s your name?”
“Adrian,” he said blithely.
“Well, Adrian…”
Nerys looked at the assembled students, eight adults with attentive eyes only for her. She looked at the pile of text books on the edge of the teacher’s desk. A little voice in her head screamed, “Don’t do it, Nerys. Just kick him in the babymaker, treat the ageist chauvinist to the scolding of his life and leave” but it was only a little voice.
“Nil desperandum, class. Your teacher is here at last,” she said and began to dish out the text books.
In a corridor in another part of the Paradise Adult Education Centre, Clovenhoof was not taking rejection well.
“But I was really enjoying it,” he said.
The meditation instructor pulled the classroom door closed behind her and stepped into the corridor.
“You’re distracting the other students, Mr Clovenhoof. The guided meditation -”
“Was great. I really felt like I was floating, high above the clouds.”
“Is that why you were making aeroplane noises?”
He winced.
“Just got a bit carried away.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
“But I’m this close to enlightenment. I can feel it.”
“I’ll speak to the office staff about refunding your registration fee. I’m sorry,” she said and retreated inside the classroom once more, closing the door firmly behind her.
“I bet the Buddha didn’t have to put up with this,” he said loudly and stomped down the corridor, deliberately scuffing his hooves on the parquet flooring.
“Of course, he didn’t need a bloody meditation class,” he muttered to himself. “Just found himself a tree to sit under and waited for enlightenment to hit him on the head like an apple.” He paused. “Or was that Isaac Newton?”
Through the open door of an empty classroom, he espied a mural of thrusting tropical trees and with treeish thoughts in his head, went inside.