With and Without, Within and Without

by Euan McAllen

  She could not hold it back any longer. Her sexual charge needed to explode. It had to be left to the body to make the final decision, and the body said yes, it’s about time. Give him to me. I fancy him. It had to have him, there and then, up a tree, where there was no danger of being seen. It made contact and opened the door to let out the caged animal, to do what came naturally to the beast. And Grimble was ready for it. He could sniff out a cake from across the room.

  She had to escape from her clothes. She began to disrobe only after Grimble promised to look away. As she struggled, she realized that he was helping her, and then also realized that she didn’t mind: rather she enjoyed the attention and the sensation which went with it. She was his god – his sex goddess. Next came his kissing, stroking, squeezing, scrambling for position. Which she also didn’t mind. It made him look weak, not in charge. Bring it on. It was all in God’s plan. Then he was on top of her. He was heavy. He was smelly. It hurt a bit. Then, when he penetrated her, it hurt a lot. She held on and did her best to enjoy the pleasure which came with the pain. The first time is the worse time; she reminded herself: her mother’s clandestine words repeated themselves inside her head like a bible reading. So this was sex: a simple but messy act of physical union; and a weapon she could use.

  She loved every moment of it after her body got over the shock of the new violation. To her, the lovemaking seemed to last an age. To him, it took the usual ten minutes. Afterward, she hated herself but then forgave herself for sex was a weapon which had to be deployed if she was going to control men – or in this case, a boy who thought he was a man.

  Job done, Grimble laid himself across the blanket, body drained, and head-spinning: another conquest, though this one felt different. He still felt tangled up in her, beholding to her; not the one who had won, who was in control. And her physical vigour had matched his at times. He looked forward to plenty of sex with her from now on. Her legs had opened wide. He intended to keep them like that. He had left her exhausted, but she had captured him.

  With sex back in its cage, Sinead turned her thoughts back to her mission: selling God to the masses; saving their souls; and in doing so, satisfying hers. She could not allow herself to stop. Standing still was not an option. Remaining a virgin was not an option.

  ***

  The second church did not thrive, but the school did. Doc was fresh blood and in his element. Suddenly, he had a room full of students who listened when he talked about all the wounded he had attended to (lots), and all the sick he had cured (not many), and all the dead bodies he had seen in his lifetime (lots). Talk about life in the kingdom scared them. Some refused to believe in it. ‘It’s a myth, don’t listen to the old fool!’ Parents told their kids before pulling them from school in protest. Long division scared them even more. That really did their heads in.

  Lady Agnes fell into a new rhythm of waiting and wishing, and washing dishes. She rediscovered the pleasure of cooking complicated meals, puddings, and desserts, and shared her skills with the girls – girls from both the Brothel and the school. She rediscovered the art of embroidery and likewise shared that. She stood at Esmeralda’s side in the classroom and imposed order, while a nervous Esmeralda tried to teach. She took particular pleasure in telling the boys to shut up and stop being naughty. She felt she had to put the boys in their place, before they became men, for then the chance was lost, and the women would suffer.

  Mutz kept his eye on Fargo, and Fargo kept his on the bear next door. Fargo refused to speak to his jailor just as the bear refused to speak to him. That was fine by Mutz for he was a soldier; not a nurse; not a prison guard. Fargo was thrown his food as the food was thrown to the bear. He looked across at the bear through the bars, sometimes to see what he had for dinner. The bear sometimes looked back when the mood took him. They were yards apart but spoke no common language; shared no common values, no common history. It was as if they came from opposite ends of the universe. The bear sometimes growled. Fargo sometimes cried.

  Fargo contemplated the lack of meaning in the universe, and the need to find it, and share it, and celebrate it. He had come full circle: he had escaped one cell only to end up in another. Why did God always want to lock him up? Did God see him as a threat? Was he too morally superior for his own good? Was he just like his brother? Was he still better than his brother? Like his brother, he was very good at making enemies, very bad at making friends. Must run in the family, he told himself, and laughed, out loud, which startled the bear and set it snarling. (Wild animals, living rough in the wilderness, had no time for jokes and did not take kindly to being laughed at.) Fargo spat at it, called it names, and called it stupid for getting caught – which in itself was stupid.

  His joke, along with others he managed to conjure up, provided little in the way of nourishment. Instead, he kept himself cheerful with the long-lasting, self-perpetuating thought that at least he had won over a young girl’s heart. She loved him for whom and what he was and what he believed in. That was something his brother could never aspire to and so would never achieve. More fool him.

  Mutz continued his new friendship with the boy called Festez, and learnt that he wanted to join the gang of youths who called themselves the ‘Skinned Heads’. Mutz said he was impressed and wished his young friend good luck.

  ‘I have to prove I’m worthy,’ said Festez. He sounded unconvinced of his own worthiness.

  ‘You will. I know you will. Show them you’re a soldier, a proper soldier, a true, honourable soldier!’

  Festez took all the words to heart and punched the sky. ‘Yes!’

  Mutz did the same. ‘Yes!’

  He saw a good soldier in the making. Perhaps he would have a sword made for him by the blacksmith? When was the boy’s next birthday? Did he know on which day he had been born? Did The Village keep records? Did village people care? Too many questions for a soldier, thought Mutz. It’s doing my head in.

  ‘Do they wear a uniform?’ asked Mutz, as Festez walked away.

  Festez twisted around, looking confused? ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, doesn’t matter. Soldier’s joke.’

  Festez walked on, shaking his head. He never did get it when adults tried to make jokes.

  Giles continued to hassle his Lady Agnes, despite her lack of enthusiasm for whenever he was around her. He was doing her a favour so felt he had the right to keep coming on strong. At Mutz’ insistence, she had to put up with him; smile and not spit; graciously accept a mug of beer from him; even put up with another picnic. She refused to kiss him, though, saying that she could only kiss the man she married. It’s the tradition in my family, she lied, and Giles believed her for some reason. Love had blurred his senses and his ability to think straight.

  Giles gave his Lady Agnes his largest, longest cucumber as a goodwill gesture; telling her not to eat it all at once and to ‘stick it away safely’, laughing loudly at his pre-planned joke. She didn’t get it, as she didn’t get the cucumber. She didn’t know what to do with it. When he was gone, she gave it to Esmeralda and told her to share it out amongst the girls. Esmeralda also didn’t know what to do with it.

  One day, Ricardo saw his sister by the duck pond again. She looked pale, defeated, but defiant; her words still spitting blood while her body struggled to keep up with the mind which was always racing ahead. He begged her to move in with him, be his guest. He wanted to feed her, look after her like family should.

  ‘Let me be your family now,’ he begged. ‘We all need family.’

  She pretended to grudgingly accept his offer, like she was doing him a favour when in fact, deep down, she was grateful.

  When Tassilo heard of this, he was furious and cut himself off from his lover with immediate effect. Ricardo was equally unforgiving: a man of God should show more compassion. They did their utmost best to ignore each other whenever they passed by in the street but failed each time and a lit
tle, if cold, conversation leaked out. The relationship was on hold, back on the shelf. It had not snapped. They entered a state of limbo. Tassilo had his church to protect from the tide of change. Ricardo had his sister to protect, from herself.

  Without Ricardo by his side to provide an opinion Tassilo made what he thought was a good decision: to ban Bingo from his church. Let them play the game elsewhere. He had to raise standards in his church, so gambling had to stop. The ban did not go down well. Some threw him a dirty look in the street. Others spat at his feet as he passed by and said things in a low voice, which he failed to hear properly. Some stopped him in his tracks and tried to change his mind with strong, emotional, loud language. He would not change his mind. His villagers had to raise their game.

  ***

  The announcement of the special tax flew around The Village in no more than two days and went down like a punctured balloon – one made of lead. The Bingo ban did not help matters. Some spat at the notice board at The Village Hall. Some spat at the church. Some, so outraged, saw it as an excuse to hit their other half, or their annoyingly large, loud children. It divided the generations: the older folk appreciated the church and attended it more, regarding it as theirs, and a good investment for the soul; whilst their children had little time for it for they were struggling to raise their own kids. In those two days, the emotional undercurrent of The Village changed direction, by ninety degrees or more. The Elders never saw it happen for they were not looking.

  Sinead had trapped Grimble with sex, and she had also trapped herself. She liked it, and she didn’t like it that she liked it. But it remained a weapon and allowed her to reprogram the wayward youth, and apply his energy to her purposes.

  ‘We must welcome in, encompass. Pure thoughts,’ she preached to herself. ‘We all must have only pure thoughts.’

  As a child, she had wanted to explode, many times, but was never permitted to, not in her father’s house. With weed, she could. As a child, God had kept her company, held her hand, stopped her crying when her father or her brothers had become too much; but she was never allowed to play with him, only respect him, adore him, learn from him. Now Grimble was there to hold her hand. She simply had to grab it and play with his head.

  She persuaded him to visit the Bathhouse and clean himself up. She wanted him to look good, smell good – even if she didn’t – telling him the sex deserved a clean body.

  ‘But I’m a Skunk!’ he complained, but he went anyway.

  Grimble had the strangest feeling: he wanted her hurt to be his hurt, his to be hers. He had the violence and she had the vision. He had the fury and she made the food. He slept well And she slept badly. He smoked a drug And she overdosed on God. He loved to hate his village and she hated to love God’s village. Sinead had broken in to break it up. Grimble wanted to break out and leave it all behind, in tatters.

  Sinead and Grimble lost themselves up the tree or in the tent, making it even more toxic than it needed to be, and less inviting. When they lit up, she told him ‘in time you will lead a new army’, which he didn’t understand. He put it down to the weed.

  One time, up the tree with his crazy bitch, Grimble saw the sky paint itself red; a wall come crashing down; a tree fall over; a horse spinning out of control; his father also out of control and being squashed to death by the hand of his son. He fed on the violence of all that was around him, and magnified it, and invented more until he was happy that there was now plenty. Now he was happy to fight, happy to die. He saw a pitiful mother slipping away in a fog of her own making. She was useless to him, useless to herself. She was condemning herself and not caring. He saw a mother who had no right to call herself his mother. Unable to stop himself, he heard himself scream ‘mother!’ He opened his eyes in alarm and was relieved to discover that he was still where he had left himself. He looked to his side. The crazy bitch was still there, just. He held her hand and provided balance.

  Sinead saw the walls wobble, rise up, roll over, diminish into the distance, sucked into the land they had carved up. She tried to reach out and touch the Maze; grab it, hold it up in her hand towards the sky, the sunlight, and so reveal its purpose, its enigma, her destiny within. She wanted to join with it, overcome it, and lose her soul in its complexity and infinity. God must have created it, and she wanted to know why.

  Grimble felt sick. He wanted to get back down to the ground – falling if that was the only way down. In time the weed wore off, and together they came back down, and hit the ground running, in one piece; and the walls remained as high as ever. Such was life in the Maze. Sinead remained charged, on the lookout for demons, lest they invaded her tent, and told Simple Simon to do likewise. To reassure her, Grimble ordered his gang to stand guard at the base of the Landfill.

  Ricardo became seriously concerned about his sister. He saw a change in her head as well as her body. But she would not talk about it, as if he was toxic. He tried to feed her lots. She continued to eat little. She did not always come home at night. He needed comfort, from his vicar, but Tassilo was refusing to give it, for Ricardo was sleeping with the enemy.

  The longer the tent stayed up, the stronger the smell. But Sinead and Grimble did not notice it much. The other Skunks did and avoided going inside. One day, the wicked witch paid the tent a visit and clashed with Sinead. She was looking for Simple Simon to frogmarch him home and out of the mad girl’s clutches. Is this place cursed? Thought the old woman as she made her entrance.

  She wanted her Simon to be free of all ‘God Rubbish’. She told the crazy girl to stay away from her Simon and not do his head in. Sinead told her he was not her property and that she was to stay away from her tent. Witches were not welcomed. Grimble backed her up with menaces. The old woman, outnumbered by minds madder than hers, vowed never to return to this stinking, foul place; and if Simon would not listen to her warnings then so be it: more fool him. Later that day, Sinead found a snake hissing inside the tent: she blamed it on the witch.

  ***

  One afternoon, Festez introduced his new friend Mutz to his older sister, at her request.

  ‘My sister saw me with you – she wants to meet you!’ he told Mutz. ‘She’s nice, my sister!’

  Mutz didn’t believe him, until he met her. Yes, the girl had good looks, healthy cheeks. She must fancy me, he thought. She didn’t. She just wanted him to persuade her brother not to join the gang. Mutz refused.

  ‘If that is what he wants, then he should see it through. It will make a man of him.’

  ‘What sort of man?’ she asked.

  Mutz had no answer to that, except to say that ‘being in a band is good. A gang protects its own.’

  She was not convinced and displayed disappointment in the man who claimed to be a friend. Mutz was not sad to see her walk away. The girl in the brothel was far less trouble.

  What had prompted her request was a clash of the Skunks and Skinned Heads at the Landfill Site. The Skins had tried to take the tent. The Skunks refused to let them. So it turned nasty. Fists flew, and there was kicking, and all acted like idiots; each side chasing after a pointless, worthless goal. The Village Idiot came down from the tent and tried to mediate, suggesting that they just toss a coin to see who had the right of way. That didn’t work, and the fighting resumed after the laughter died down, though with less intensity, for now, it was more about show and showmanship. Next, Sinead came down from her mountain, looking pale but charged up, and to some a little bit frightening. She tried to talk the Skinned Heads into joining ‘the cause’, the ‘new army’. God was waiting for them, she said, but they didn’t wait to find out and rushed off, leaving the Skunks to wonder why they were still hanging around. Grimble was the answer, of course.

  That same day, Doc was stopped in the street one day by an angry parent and had his brain battered.

  ‘What is this fucking long division? Why so long? Why can’t you leave our boy in
peace? You’re wearing him out! He doesn’t go to sleep when I tell him!’

  Doc decided that silence was the best defence. This angry parent was as bad as any angry king or prince, and just as the parent began to shake him, he was saved by the intervention of a young woman. She dismissed the man with strong words, then grabbed Doc’s arm and walked him on, out of danger; leaving in her wake her most threatening look. Doc thanked her, profusely. ‘No problem,’ she replied, now with a sweet look on her face. In an instant, it had replaced the stern one.

  She invited him home for a piece of cake and hot milk, all above board. She introduced herself as Ingella, saying she wanted to thank him for the change she had seen in her brother, one of his pupils. Doc discovered that Ingella made a good cake and that her parents were at work, always at work: they were tailors, and they loved to sit alongside each other and chat while they stitched and made new clothes. If he wanted new clothes she could get him a discount, Ingella promised. Doc looked down, and around at himself, and said he would seriously consider it.

  Ingella was relaxed, and she relaxed the Royal Doctor who was far from home, and without royalty to serve. She was in no rush for him to leave, so they talked, and enjoyed the pleasure of each other’s company. And without him realising it, she interrogated the doctor, with sweetness and delight, and more cake. And she liked what she heard, if not what she saw particularly. But looks were secondary to her, as were years.

  And when he did leave, Doc wanted to see her again, just like a younger man. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ Doc did not know that he had already caught her eye before baking her cake. He did not know that Ingella was looking for a decent, intelligent man to be her husband and the father of her child. (She only wanted the one, believing in quality over quantity.)

  After that meeting, Ingella watched the doctor closely, and continued to take measurements, and found that she was actually attracted to him – the all-round person if not the entire body. He would need to exercise more, she concluded, and eat smaller meals, and drink less beer; but otherwise fine.