Apocalypso

1

Porrig was lying in the
gutter, but he wasn’t looking at the stars. He was rubbing at the lump on his
forehead and bewailing his lot. Bewailing his lot was something Porrig did on a
more or less regular basis. It came naturally to him. He was good at it.

Porrig
sighed as he rubbed and wondered exactly where he’d gone wrong this time. It
did not take him long to reach a conclusion. Porrig had unwittingly stepped
across the path of the common man’s arch enemy. Political Correctness. He had
said the wrong thing in the wrong company and he bad paid the price for so
doing.

He had
received the thrashing.

He had
missed the pudding course.

The
dinner party had, until Porrig said his wrong thing, been going rather well.
The five people present had all been enjoying themselves. Porrig’s fiancée,
Ellen, had been enjoying herself. Her two girlfriends from college had been
enjoying themselves. And Collette, Ellen’s sister, whose dinner party it was,
had been enjoying herself also. Porrig, perhaps, had not been enjoying himself
quite so much as the rest of them, because he hadn’t seemed to be able to get a
word in very often. But he had been enjoying himself up to a point, which was
better than not enjoying himself at all.

And not
enjoying himself at all was something Porrig did almost as often as bewailing
his lot. In fact the two walked hand in hand. So to speak.

The
dinner party conversation had revolved about ‘Sisterhood’ and the Feminist
Movement. Much of this was lost upon Porrig, who did not have a sister and who
normally associated the word
movement
only with the word
bowel.
But
at least the conversation seemed to be about women and Porrig was always happy
to talk about women.

And so,
when there was a momentary lull in this conversation (it being either twenty
past or twenty to the hour, those mysterious times when rooms unaccountably go
silent), Porrig took the opportunity to remark casually that when it came to
women he was very much a ‘tit’ man himself.

The
strangled gasps and horrified expressions informed Porrig that he had committed
a social gaffe.

Porrig
grinned foolishly. ‘Did I
really
say “tit” man?’ he asked.

Four
female heads nodded grimly.

‘I do
apologize,’ said Porrig. ‘What I meant to say was “tit”
person’

But it
hadn’t helped.

Porrig
was taken to task. Cruel words were spoken and for a moment or two it seemed to
Porrig that he was no longer Porrig at all, but some vile embodiment of all
things that were male, and therefore loathsome.

But he
took it like a man, Well,
person.
Because, after all, he had been in the
wrong.

And
then, for some reason that was quite beyond Porrig, one of his fiancée’s
college friends brought up the subject of men’s socks. About how ‘fetching’ men
looked when wearing nothing but their socks. This got a big laugh around the
table.

Porrig,
sensing a lightening of the situation, responded by stating the practicality of
men’s socks. How rarely they needed changing, for instance. And this got a big
laugh too.

Feeling
that he was now in safe territory, Porrig continued. Men’s socks triumphed over
certain articles of feminine attire, he explained, in that they were so easy to
put on and take off And he went on to illustrate this by relating a humorous
anecdote concerning the difficulties he had once encountered when trying to
get a young woman out of her tights in the back of a taxi.

Porrig
wasn’t certain who had thrown the first punch, but he was sure that it hadn’t
been him. He sighed once more and picked himself up from the gutter. Was his
wedding still on? he wondered. It seemed to be off more times than a prossie’s
knickers. Porrig groaned. That was wrong too, wasn’t it! He hadn’t meant to
think that.
Sex therapist’s
knickers, that was probably it.

Porrig
dusted down his trousers. Were those stains red wine, or were they blood? Most
likely they were both. Porrig took the opportunity to be-wail his lot once
more. It wasn’t his fault that he got himself into these situations. Well, it
was, but it wasn’t… OK then, perhaps it was.

Porrig
wasn’t a bad person, he was kind and he was caring. But he lacked for a certain
something. Some social gene had not been encoded into his make-up. He said the
wrong things and he did the wrong things, but not through malice or badness.

Just
because.

He
tried so very hard to get things right, but his well-intentioned arrows always
fell a little bit short of the mark. He was always that little bit out of step.
Always that little bit
wrong!

By day
Porrig cleaned and polished used motor cars for a man of doubtful integrity who
was known locally as Mad Jack. Porrig had learned early in his life that it is
always best to tread warily whilst in the company of any man who has the
epithet ‘Mad’ attached to his name. When at work Porrig chose his words with
the utmost care. Mad Jack referred to his lone employee as Dumb Porrig. Both
seemed happy with this arrangement.

By
night, however, things were different. By night the
real
Porrig emerged
from his daytime chrysalis. The
real
Porrig was a cartoonist. A graphic
novelist. A creator of comic-book heroes.

Not
that he had, as yet, managed to get anything published. But he kept trying. Oh
how he kept trying. And he was careful too. Very careful that all his
comic-book heroes should be politically correct. His latest, for example, was the
very exemplar of political correctitude, being a small black boy, who, in the
company of his lovable pet pooch, righted social wrongs and put bad guys to
flight.

Exactly
why
The Adventures of Johnny Foreigner and Dildo the Dog
had so far
failed to impress prospective publishers was also quite beyond Porrig.

Still,
perhaps they’d go for his new hero, who was not only black, but
wheelchair-bound. Jazz
the Spaz.

Porrig
wandered home. He lived quietly with his mum and dad in Moby Dick Terrace. ‘Quietly’,
because his mother had forbidden him from speaking in the house, and ‘with his
mum and dad’ because no-one else seemed keen to offer him lodgings. The
Brentford house stood directly opposite to that once owned by the now legendary
Archroy, renowned world traveller and discoverer of Noah’s Ark. Archroy’s house
had a blue plaque above the front door. Porrig’s didn’t.

But it
will one day, thought Porrig, although
why
was anybody’s guess.

Porrig
did not enter by the front gate but climbed carefully over the fence. The
reason for this
outré
behaviour was that Porrig’s neighbour, Mrs
Chisholm, was in the habit of setting traps for him. She had recently joined a
Pentecostal Church, The Twenty-third Congregation of Espadrille, and be-come
convinced that Porrig was an agent of the Antichrist.

Porrig
had tried to put her right, but strangely his pleas of innocence had gone
unheeded and his kind offer to pluck the hairs which sprouted from a mole on
the lady’s face had been misconstrued. Further wary treading was now necessary
in his own front garden.

Porrig
stepped over the piano wire that was stretched between the rose bushes, turned
his key in the front-door lock and went inside.

He was
now forced to shin over the armchair that blocked the hail. This was not a
barricade to keep him out, nor was it the work of Mrs Chisholm. This was only
his mum having another bash at feng
shui.

On the
hail table was an envelope. Porrig observed that it had his name written upon
it. The writing was in green ink. The writing was in a careful hand. Porrig
took the envelope and went upstairs.

Porrig’s
bedroom was not without interest. It contained many books, as Porrig was an
avid reader, devouring the works of such luminaries as Johnny Quinn and Hugo
Rune with great gusto. Whether or not he actually took in much of what he read
was a matter for debate (though not for a particularly serious one).

There
was Porrig’s drawing table, of course, to which were pinned his latest efforts
at penmanship. And it did have to be said that he was a fine artist: skilful
and delicate, with a lightness of touch which captured perfectly the mood and
disposition of his characters. Sadly, however, this was buggered all to hell by
the excruciating phrases that issued in speech bubbles from their mouths.

Porrig
sat down on his bed and perused the envelope. It was definitely his name on the
front, but as there was no address and no stamp, it had certainly been
delivered by hand. Which might not be such a good thing. A letter bomb from
next door, perhaps? Porrig shrugged this off. Many faults had he, but the
duffel-coat of paranoia did not hang in the wardrobe of his failings.

Porrig
read aloud his name. It was spelt Padraig, but as it was pronounced Porrig that
was what everybody called him.

‘Padraig,’
read Porrig. ‘Padraig Arthur Naseby’. Porrig shook his head; he really hated
that name. No matter how you read it, it always sounded like The Accused’. ‘Padraig
Arthur Naseby; you stand before me accused on ten counts of Political Incorrectness.
How do you plead?’ Guilty. Always guilty.

Porrig’s
name was a lot he constantly bewailed. He would change it by deed poll as soon
as he could get around to it. And as soon as he could make his mind up as to a
replacement. He fancied something posh. One of those double-barrelled lads so
beloved of the aristocracy. Screen-Saver perhaps, or Sellby-Date.

Padraig
Arthur Naseby indeed!

Porrig
opened up the envelope. Inside it he found, of all things, a letter, similarly
addressed to himself. Porrig unfolded it. Top quality paper, all waxy, with a
watermark and everything. From a solicitor’s office: Ashbury, Gilstock and
Phart-Ebum, Grand Parade, Brighton, Sussex.

‘Brighton,
Sussex,’ read Porrig. ‘I’ve never been to Brighton, Sussex. And Phart-Ebum,
that’s a good name. I rather fancy that. Porrig Phart-Ebum, it has a definite
ring.’

Having
got that over, Porrig read the letter.

Dear Mr Naseby (it read],

I am instructed by the executor of your
late uncle’s estate to inform you of your inheritance.

As you must surely know, your uncle entered
into many different fields of endeavour subsequent to his retirement from the
stage. Not all of these were entirely successful, and the full extent of his
debts, along with the rightful ownership of certain properties have yet to be
established.

However, his will is most clear upon one
point: that the full ownership of ALPHA 17 be passed onto you and you alone.

In order that we may facilitate matters
apropos and a priori, it is requested that you present yourself here at your
earliest convenience.

Please bring proof of your identity. We
look forward to meeting you.

‘Et
cetera,’ said Porrig.

And, ‘Cheeses
of Nazareth,’ said Porrig.

And, ‘Uncle
who?’
said Porrig.

And, ‘ALPHA
17,’ said Porrig. ‘An uncle I know nothing of has died and left me a planet.’

Said
Porrig.

2

Porrig’s father, Augustus
Naseby, lurked in the standing room. This had, until recently, been the sitting
room, but, with his wife’s
fling shui
on the go again, the armchairs
were now distributed about the house and the only furniture that remained in
the sitting room was a low coffee table with a flowerpot on the top and a
drawerless chest of drawers. But these
were
beautifully positioned.

Porrig’s
father lurked behind the drawerless chest. Lurking was something he excelled
at, he had it down to an art. At his son’s appearance in the doorway he shrank
down and kept very still.