Nowhere Near Milkwood (14 page)

“I wish he would stop fiddling with his strait jacket. It’s giving me unpleasant memories.”

“Don’t look at him in that case. Seek a distraction.”

One came in the form of a figure who entered the TALL STORY wearing a knapsack on his shoulders. His boots left crimson prints on the surface of the polished void. Hywel said:

“That’s Steven; and he must have trodden in Michael.”

I recoiled in distaste when the figure approached the bar. As I did so, my foot struck something round and hollow which rolled under a nearby table. Hywel was delighted. “Ah, you’ve found Walter’s head!”

I pointed in turn at the newcomer, the loose skull and the bootprints. “Clear these up for me, will you?” I joked.

But Hywel did, worse luck.

Steven Karlsen had one peculiarity, and that was his inability to understand sarcasm. Because the punch at Dr Mondaugen’s annual party had been jokingly recommended, he had helped himself liberally to the foul brew. As a consequence, he had spent five whole days wandering the streets of Cardiff in a high state of delirium.

Where he had been in that time, what he had done, he could not say. All he knew was that his pockets, once full, were now empty and that his knapsack, once empty, was now full...

As the trance finally began to wear off, he was delighted to find himself in the environs of the Docklands. Feeling more than a little thirsty, he made his way to the TALL STORY, hoping to prevail upon some kind stranger to buy him a drink. Entering the establishment, he had the good fortune to recognise Alan Griffiths, an old friend, sitting at a table near the door.

Adjusting his knapsack and pushing through the crowded drinkers, Steven reached his friend and promptly sat down next to him. But the friend was not pleased. He tried to hide behind his drink, holding it so close to his face that Steven thought he must be trying to climb into it head first.

“Well!” Steven slapped his friend on the back. “What a surprise!”

Alan said nothing. He continued to pour the creamy liquid down his throat. Steven found himself forced to address his friend’s oversized gullet, a particularly repulsive part of his anatomy. “Fancy meeting you here, of all places!”

“It was inevitable.” Alan slammed his glass down and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “Cardiff Docks is the hub of the Universe and as such, all mortal souls are eventually drawn to it by its irresistible gravity.”

“Really?” Steven blinked in surprise. “I never knew that before. In that case, it is not so odd after all.”

“Sarcasm,” Alan explained with a grimace. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke at Steven. In the half-light of the dissolute tavern, the smoke writhed like a pale and weary ghost.

“You are alone?” Steven glanced around into the heaving mass of humanity. “I am not interrupting anything?”

“I am waiting for someone,” Alan replied. He spat contemptuously: “The most gentle and considerate woman in the world.”

“Oh yes?” Steven raised an eyebrow. “Then I would very much like to meet her.”

Alan was exasperated. “Sarcasm,” he growled.

“Ah!” Steven nodded sagely, but he was completely bewildered. “I do not understand sarcasm.” He lowered his gaze and twiddled his thumbs.

There was an awkward pause then. Alan cleared his throat and pretended to be absorbed in reading the back of his matchbox. Eventually, Steven summoned up the courage to ask him for a drink. “If it is not too much trouble,” he added.

“Of course not! Nothing would give me greater pleasure!” Alan scowled with a viciousness that surprised even himself. “A bottle of the best champagne, perhaps?”

“Oh dear, no.” Steven shook his head. “A lager shandy will suffice.”

Alan sighed. He realised that even the bluntest sarcasm could have no effect on Steven. He decided to take advantage of the situation. “Have you lost all your money then?”

“Used it up,” Steven answered. “My pockets were full five days ago, stuffed with notes. But somehow I have managed to spend them all. I dimly recall entering a succession of shops and purchasing various items. I remember nothing more.” He indicated the knapsack, slung over one shoulder. “They are all in here, I presume.”

“Tell you what,” Alan suggested. “If you have anything of interest, I will exchange it for this.” He held up his half empty glass and swirled the soapy contents around.

Steven licked his dry lips. “Certainly. You are a good friend, Alan.”

“Come then. Let us see what you bought.” Alan snatched Steven’s knapsack and emptied it onto the table. A torrent of mouldering junk clattered out before them. “Well, it seems that you have been visiting every antique shop in the City. Antique spelt J-U-N-K.”

“Is it all worthless?” Steven was disappointed.

“Heavens, no! Rarely have I seen such a magnificent collection of fine and tasteful pieces.” Alan sifted through battered brass ornaments, cracked and chipped statuettes, iron globes with cords trailing from them and rusty candlesticks to pull out a broken clock, rotten frame sprouting springs. “Marvellous. Superlative. Exquisite.”

“It is yours.” Steven beamed gratefully. “And take anything else you fancy.”

Alan laughed. It was a gruff howl of a laugh. The clock slipped from his fingers back onto the crest of the pyramid of junk. “Sarcasm, you fool! Are you completely stupid? I would not give a toenail for this mechanical analogue of horse manure!”

“Sarcasm?” Steven scratched his head. “I am sorry. I thought...”

“I mean, look at this!” Alan held up a dusty blue bottle and waved it under Steven’s nose. “What on earth possessed you to buy this?”

Steven peered closer at the bottle. He blinked. He thought he glimpsed a dim and fitful shape moving in the depths of the opaque glass. He grappled with thin wisps of memory. A dark and evil-smelling antique shop down a particularly obscure alley in a part of Cardiff he had never visited before. An old man with young eyes and a white beard. An aura of menace and an arcane secret concerning the bottle. Something about a demon and a single wish?

Alan pulled the stiff cork out of the neck of the bottle and sniffed gingerly. He wrinkled up his face and retched. He closed one eye and tried to peer into the bottle. “There is something in here. I cannot quite see what it is.”

“If it is nothing of interest,” Steven ventured, “perhaps you will buy me a drink for old time’s sake?”

“Old time’s sake?” Alan was aghast. His lower jaw began to chatter. Abruptly, it ceased and he bent forward, still clutching the bottle. “What exactly do you mean?”

“We are friends.” Steven kept his eyes on the floor. “We were very good friends once. You told me that I was your best friend. You said that you admired and respected me for my intelligence, humour and compassion.”

Alan curled his lips back in a snarl. “Sarcasm, you fool! I was joking. I always hated you. I thought you were the most mindless cretin I ever had the misfortune to meet. And you are not going to touch a single drop of my drink!”

“I do not understand sarcasm.” Steven fought back tears.

At that moment, a tall, auburn haired woman entered the tavern and, spotting Alan, made her way over to his table. Steven was impressed with her elegance as she wove through the masses, a skill that had always eluded him. She stood before them with a winsome smile and Steven instantly rose to offer his seat to her.

“What time do you call this?” Alan placed his foot on the vacated chair, barring her descent. “Eh?”

“I was held up.” The woman was apologetic. “A meeting with my producer.”

“Really?” Alan shook the bottle at her face. “Are you sure about that? Are you quite convinced that you were not, in fact, spending a squeaky session with him in the recording studio?”

“Quite sure.”

Alan turned to Steven. “This is Toni,” he said. “A girl so dedicated to jazz that she sees fit to blow any trumpet on offer, even when it belongs to a decrepit and rather dirty old man.”

“I have told you before.” Toni’s lips quivered. “I am not having an affair.”

Clutching his glass in his free hand, Alan kicked the table over. Steven’s collection of junk crashed to the floor. The other drinkers began to stare. For once, silence reigned in the tavern. “Get out! You are no better than a common tart!”

After she had left, and the other drinkers had turned back to their own concerns, Steven set the table up and scooped as much of his possessions as he could reach back into his knapsack. “Do you really think that was wise?” he asked, ingenuously. “Creating such a disturbance? Are you not embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed?” Alan’s face twisted again. “Of course I am embarrassed! I will never be able to show my face in Cardiff Docks again!” His voice was thick with scorn. He held aloft the bottle in one hand and his drink in the other, as if to weigh his shame on the scales of conscience. “I am so embarrassed that I wish the ground would open up and swallow me...”

Leaning across, Steven managed to catch Alan’s drink. But he was unable to rescue the bottle. With a self-satisfied grin, he drained the glass and glanced around. Luckily, no-one had noticed. Shouldering his knapsack, he left the table and followed Toni out into the wide and mysterious world.

“I do not understand sarcasm,” he said to himself.

Neither, so it seems, do demons.

For more than a week, Walter had been feeling a trifle Scottish. It didn’t help that his house was the colour of salmon. Nor that his wife was named Heather. He’d wanted a magnolia house and a wife named Patsy, but you can’t have everything. A primeval force was moving within him, an urge to plunge through moor, lake and glen.

Over breakfast, a meal of sheep’s stomach stuffed with lungs, he mentioned his condition. He wondered if turning into a Highlander would affect his career. He was, after all, paid to sell a chemical which removed ice-cream stains from trousers.

His wife glowered at him. Being a gentle soul, her glower was not hugely effective. If looks could kill, he’d be complaining of slight abdominal cramps and asking his pharmacist for aspirin. Fortunately, he felt sick enough already.

“You’ll have to adjust,” she told him. “My brother, Desmond, had a dose of Burma. Took to wearing rubies in his nose and making fish-bone curry. But he kept his job in the Civil Service. And cousin Joseph was a train spotter who became an Eskimo. Never needed to change his anorak, just noted down kayaks instead.”

Rather than feeling reassured, Walter finished his food in anxious silence, wiped his knife on his beard and stuffed it into his sock. He wanted to hold forth on bridges and pneumatic tyres. But his wife hated lofty or inflated topics. So he dressed for work, shook the last drops from the bottle of woad and mounted his bicycle.

Around him, men and women were changing, shells of identity falling off and rattling on the pavement. Walter blinked. It seemed to him that whenever an identity clattered to the ground, a horde of imps rushed out of shop doorways and storm drains and lifted it up. Then they fitted it onto the shoulders of some other pedestrian. They moved so fast, it was difficult to register their presence at all.

Walter felt he ought to investigate this phenomenon more closely, but at that moment he passed the bus station. Lately, the bus station had exerted a strange fascination for him. He spent the next hour or so hanging around the ticket office, threatening commuters and demanding the fare back to Glasgow.

When he reached work, his boss was waiting for him. Mr Jhabvala was a yogi and astrologer who had invented
Caste Away
, the ultimate frozen dessert stain eradicator, in Bombay. His prototype was so successful that jealous rivals had pursued him all over the subcontinent. Years in the Kashmiri mountains had taken their toll. His skin was pitted with cobra bites and his eyes glittered like opals.

He invited Walter to sit down, leant back in his swivel chair and stroked his chin. A run-in with brigands had left him with only three fingers on his left hand. The missing digits on his right hand, however, were testimony to frostbite in the Hindu Kush.

“Listen, old boy,” he began, toying with his cravat, “I’ve paid a lot of thought to this and I’ve decided to let you go. Awfully sorry, but you know how it is. Be a good chap and don’t cry. Stiff upper lip and all that. Thing is, old bean, we can’t allow a Scotsman to peddle our goods. Customers would take fright. Kindly accept this Cheddar as a parting gift and run along. Toodle pip.”

Sighing languidly, Mr Jhabvala pasted his kiss-curl back onto his brow and inserted a cigarette into a long holder. Walter ignored the gift and stomped out, cursing into his beard. On the street, he caught his new reflection in a tailor’s window. His Scottishness was growing worse by the minute. The claymore in his belt interfered with the back wheel of his bicycle, the tam-o’-shanter keep slipping over his eyes. He’d have to visit his doctor.

Dr Walnut was a family practitioner. He greeted Walter cordially, offering him a hookah and rolling out a carpet for his benefit. Walter felt uncomfortable in the surgery, possibly because he’d never seen Dr Walnut in a fez before. Foregoing the hashish, he outlined his problem. Dr Walnut nodded, poured himself a glass of raki and clapped his hands. The receptionist, Miss White, came in and undulated her bare midriff on the desk between them.

“A little thin, no?” he chuckled, exhaling noxious fumes through flared nostrils. Noticing Walter’s scowl, he held up his hands in a mollifying gesture. “You can’t get the staff these days. Now what can I do for you? You are turning Scottish? Well there’s a bug about. Rampant Internationalism. It’s the rains we’ve been having.”

Walter nodded. Dr Walnut stood up and moved to a filing cabinet in the corner of his surgery. He opened the drawers and a scruffy child popped out of each. In their features, they were miniature replicas of Dr Walnut. They leapt to the floor and began riding hobbyhorses in tight circles on the gaudy central rug. Walter caught the flash of silk, the creak of leather, the acrid odour of mare’s milk.

“My sons succumbed last week. Mongolianism, a severe outbreak. All my silver scalpels have been looted. Keep erecting tents in the kitchen. What can one do?” He inhaled deeply on his hookah and his eyes sparkled. “The little heathens! They’re absolutely furious, no?” One at a time, he lifted them and deposited them back into the filing cabinet, forcing the drawers shut with the toe of his curly slipper.

Walter wasn’t interested in other people’s children. He paced the room in dismay, his sporran swinging. “That’s all very well. But what can ye do for me?” He scratched at the lice in his plaid. Dr Walnut gave a mysterious smirk and reached into the folds of his robes. He removed a murky phial and held it up.

“It is most fortunate you came to see me at this time. I have just finished distilling this liquid from my sons. It is poison to the imps who cause the ailment. I call it
Tartar Source
.” He winked slyly. “It is expensive, but for you there is special price.”

“Och, give it here!” Walter snatched the bottle and swallowed the contents. For a moment he reeled and clutched at his head. Then he made his way gingerly out of the surgery. Dr Walnut followed, calling him the offspring of a dog and various unnatural partners. He brushed past Miss White, who had returned to Reception and was sugaring her body, and fell down the steps onto the street.

Over the next fortnight, a second transformation took place. Walter was at a complete loss to explain this one. He found his head was still eager to cycle everywhere but his abdomen wanted a bus. His arms had an urge to paddle a coracle. Most disconcertingly, his toes began to smell of fish and his neck of sausage. When he woke one morning to find that Heather had drawn isobars over his body with a felt tip pen, he guessed he’d also have to swallow his pride.

Dr Walnut was very forgiving. He studied Walter carefully, tapped parts of his attire with a tiny hammer and grunted. “The cure was only partially successful. Your head seems to have remained Scottish while the rest of you has altered. You have become a walking analogue of the British Isles. Your body is England, your arms are Wales and your legs reach all the way down to Cornwall.”

“That explains it!” cried Walter. “Yesterday, I was passing a cake shop and my feet were attracted by the cream. They went one way, my body went another and I slipped and landed on my Kent. But if I’m the mainland, where does Ireland fit in?” He saw the answer in Dr Walnut’s pout. “My wife! What do you mean! Oppressed?”

Dr Walnut shook his head. “No, no. Green and gently rolling.” He took Walter’s pulse. “Any pain in your Lancashire?” Walter had to admit there wasn’t. His Cleveland itched and his Herefordshire rumbled, but these were minor concerns. Something of much more fundamental importance had just occurred to him.

“What will happen if the Union dissolves? I’ve heard that Scotland stands a good chance of winning independence. If that happens will my head fall off?” he demanded.

“I think I know what your problem is,” Dr Walnut replied. “You’re a character in a short story. Some amateur hack is writing this down even as we speak. At the end, to entertain the reader, he’ll make the Union dissolve and your head will indeed fall off.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do?” Walter was in tears.

“If the reader doesn’t reach the end, you’ll be okay. You’d better try to be boring from now on, in the hope they won’t go any further. If you try really hard, they might throw the short story away in disgust and do something else.”

It was suddenly very clear to Walter. His fate lay in the hands of some non-accountable reader. But what was the best way of being boring? He thought about it. Whatever happened, the reader mustn’t be allowed to reach the end of the story. He thought about it some more. He appealed to the reader to stop at this point.

His head fell off.