The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (10 page)

So what
do we
really
know about Billy?

Well,
not a lot.

We do
know that at the age of twenty-three he went missing and that ten years later,
at the age of thirty-three (which may or may not be a significant age), he
reappeared and swiftly took control of just about everything.

But
there’s an awful lot of unanswered questions. It is interesting that those who
knew him at school remember him only as the boy who answered the ‘man walks
into the desert’ question and for very little else. It is to be noted that all
the great prophets have their missing years, and that each of them walked into
a desert. Entering as a man, but returning as a son of God.

So what
went on with Billy?

Well,
let’s go back and see.

If you enter the village
of Bramfield from the end where the common is, turn right at the mini-roundabout
that everyone drives straight across, pass the restaurant that is always
changing hands, the off-licence run by the fat bloke with the earring, and the
newsagent’s where they sell the dreary greetings cards, you will come to the
war memorial.

It’s
only a very small war memorial, because it was built by public subscription and
the public weren’t too giving, but it’s there all right if you’re prepared to
look hard enough. And if you do look hard enough and you take the left where
you find it, you’ll find yourself in the lane where Billy lived.

There
is no road sign on this lane. The elders of Bramfield felt that the name of
this lane was not in the best possible taste, so they had the road sign taken
down. The name of this lane is Colin Regis Lane.

As you
may know, the word Regis is tacked onto the name of a town to signify that some
old king or queen of times past slept there and liked it very much, as in Lyme
Regis or Bognor Regis. Exactly who Cohn was is now anyone’s guess, but he was
obviously someone who caught the royal fancy.

Moving
along this lane you will pass several fine-looking Georgian houses on the
right. There is Lugger’s View, where Tim lives. Stoker’s Folly, where Tom
lives. Barnet Villa, where Nick resides. And Colin’s End, which is presently
unoccupied.

Moving
further- along you will come to the allotments, and presently, the yucky pond.
The yucky pond is actually called Tinker’s Pond, but it is locally known as the
yucky pond due to the excess of yuckiness that floats upon its surface.

The
yucky pond is maintained by public subscription.

Opposite
the yucky pond there stands a fine big house. All on its own with a high wall
around it. This house is built in the Tudor style and its name is Houmfort
House.

And
Houmfort House was Billy’s house.

Billy
lived in Houmfort House with his mum and his granny. Billy’s dad did not live
there. Billy’s dad had business elsewhere and only came home every once in a
while to hand out presents and tell Billy tales of the places he’d seen. Billy
and his dad were not ‘close’. But then Billy wasn’t really ‘close’ to anyone.

Billy
was different.

And ‘different’
is hard to be close to.

Billy’s
mum was
not
different. Billy’s mum was the same. Very much the same. The
same as she had always been, as long as Billy had known her. Billy liked her
that way, although sometimes he felt that he could do with a change.

Like
today, for instance.

Today
being Tuesday.

Billy
always took Tuesday’s breakfast on the veranda at the back of the house.
Whatever the weather, or the time of year. It was a tradition in the Barnes
household. A tradition, or an old charter or something.

Billy
feasted this particular Tuesday morning upon roll-mop herrings and bitter-sweet
tea. His mum had her usual, which was the usual, same as ever.

Billy
always kept very still while he ate. Only his jaw moved, slowly and
rhythmically. Twenty-three times a minute. Billy’s mum, on the other hand, was
a flamboyant eater, given to sweeping gestures and guttural utterances.
Belching and flatulence. Food-flinging and the banging down of cutlery. They
complemented one another, as is right between a mother and her son.

‘It
says here,’ said Billy’s mum, reading aloud from the
Daily Sketch,
‘that
he engaged in certain practices which gave him the kind of moustache you can
only get off with turps.’

Billy
swallowed a well-masticated segment of herring and turned his eyes in the
direction of his mother. She was a fine woman. A fine
big
woman.
Generously formed. Of ample proportions. Why, a starving man could feast upon
such a woman for a good two months. Assuming that he had a large enough freezer
to keep the bits fresh in.

‘Ah no,’
said Billy’s mum. ‘I must have misread it. The ventriloquist’s name was Turps.
The dummy didn’t have a moustache.’

Billy
moved his head ever so slightly, just enough to take the drinking straw between
his lips. He sipped up bitter-sweet tea, but he didn’t swallow.

‘That’s
Africa for you,’ said Billy’s mum. ‘The white man’s grave and the black man’s dingledongler.
Which reminds me, have you fed your granny today, Billy?’

Billy
nodded with his eyes. Of course he had fed his granny. He always fed his
granny. It was his job to feed his granny. And he enjoyed it very much. After
all, he loved his granny.

Billy
kept his granny in a suitcase.

It was
a large suitcase and it had holes bored in the lid, so it wasn’t cruel, or
anything. And it saved space. Billy’s granny used to take up quite a lot of
space. Her bed was the biggest in the house and the most comfortable. Billy now
shared this bed with his mum.

Granny
lived under the bed. In the suitcase.

Billy
took Granny out at weekends and gave her a wash and a change of clothes. Not
every boy was as good to his granny as Billy was.

But
then not every boy had a granny quite like Billy’s.

In her
youth she had danced the candle mambo with Fred Astaire, trodden the boards
with Sarah Bernhardt, glittered at society functions, and cast her exaggerated
shadow in fashionable places.

But now
she was old and weak and withered. Bereft of speech and movement and much gone
with the moth. Deaf and blind and dotty and gnawed away by rats.

But
Billy still found time for her. Although he wasn’t ‘close.

‘Apparently,’
said Billy’s mum, tapping at her tabloid, ‘the Welsh have no concept of Velcro.
I went to North Wales once with your father. He was very tall in those days and
the Welsh are very short.

Midgets,
most of them, positively dwarf-like. They were quite in awe of your father. The
Mayor of Harlech presented him with a pair of braces that glowed in the dark.
Something to do with the mines, I believe.’

Billy
swallowed his bitter-sweet tea, his Adam’s apple rising to the occasion.

‘You’d
like Wales, Billy,’ said his mum. ‘Plenty of room to move furniture around and
no Velcro getting under your feet.’

Billy
smiled with his eyes.

The front
door bell rang in the hall.

‘That
will be the postman,’ said Billy’s mum. ‘He’s always doing that.’ She poured
herself a noisy cup of coffee, sloshed in the milk and stirred vigorously.
Slap,
slap, slap
went her big fat feet upon the tiled veranda floor. But she didn’t
get up. She leaned back in her chair and farted loudly.

The
door bell rang again, and then again, and then no more. At length the postman
made his entrance through the garden door.

‘I’ve a
package here for a Mr William Barnes,’ said the postman. ‘And it has to be
signed for.’

Billy
eyed his mum. The big woman shifted uneasily in her wicker chair. She never
took kindly to tradespeople as a rule, especially, as now, when she was naked.
But she always had time for a postman, or a porter, as long as their
fingernails were clean.

Billy’s
mum spread her
Daily Sketch
modestly across her knees and beckoned to the
bearer of the Queen’s mail.

The
bearer of the Queen’s mail seemed strangely reticent. ‘It’s for your son,’ he
said.
‘He
has to sign for it.’

Billy
turned his head by twenty-three degrees and spoke his first words of the day. ‘From
whom?’ he asked.

The
postman examined the parcel. ‘From
Necrosoft Industries,’
he said. ‘Of
Brentford, Middlesex’

Billy
nodded thoughtfully and then sprang to his feet. He vaulted over the veranda
rail, performed a handspring and a cartwheel and came to rest before the
postman.

‘Pen,’
said Billy, extending a hand.

The
postman handed Billy the parcel, fumbled with his clipboard and pen. ‘Your
mother shouldn’t be allowed,’ he whispered.

Billy
signed upon the dotted line and returned both pen and clipboard to the postman.
‘Fuck off,’ he told him. And the postman took his leave.

Billy
returned to his chair on the veranda and sat down upon it. Birdies gossiped on
the garden walls, bumblies toiled amongst the roses, and the sun beamed down
its blessings over all.

Upstairs
in the suitcase underneath the bed, Billy’s granny sucked upon her sunken gums
and dreamed of Fred Astaire.

‘Have you thought any more
about getting a job?’ asked Billy’s mum, over lunch, which was taken, as of
Tuesday, in the greenhouse.

Billy
sucked soup through a straw. He had
not
thought any more about getting a
job.

‘You’re
so very qualified, dear,’ said his mum, herself now prettified in a floral frock.
‘You have all your school certificates and your university degree and here you
are at the age of twenty-three, a virtual recluse. You never go out anywhere
and you never have any lady friends round to call. You were always such a
popular boy at school. You used to fit in so nicely. Could you not find a job
you could fit nicely into?’

Billy
raised an eyebrow. The subject of ‘a job’ always came up on a Tuesday. Which
was why Billy always felt that he could do with a change of mum on a Tuesday.

‘Well,
dear?’ asked Billy’s mum.

‘No,’
said Billy. ‘I have important matters that must be dealt with.’

‘More
of this “business elsewhere”?’

‘Just
so.’

‘But if
you have “business elsewhere”, how come you’re never elsewhere getting on with
it?’

Billy
tapped at his right temple with a skinny digit. ‘Elsewhere can be closer than
you think,’ he said.

Over tea, which being
Tuesday they took in the cupboard underneath the stairs, Billy’s mum asked, ‘What
was that package that arrived for you this morning?’

‘I don’t
know,’ said Billy. ‘I haven’t opened it yet.’

Billy and his mum never
dined together on Tuesday evenings. Billy’s mum always put on her best tweed
suit and went out somewhere. Billy wasn’t altogether certain where this
somewhere was. But he suspected that it was the same somewhere that Andy the
landlord of the Jolly Gardeners always went to.

Although
he had no idea as to where
this
somewhere was, either.

But as
Billy didn’t care, it didn’t matter.

Billy
now sat all alone at the kitchen table and opened up his package. The brown
paper fell away to reveal a bright plastic something of no obvious purpose and
some sheets of printed paper.

Billy
put the bright plastic something carefully aside and read from the top sheet of
paper.

S
urfing the web?

A
nyone can do that! Why not

T
ry something
really
radical?

A
ccess the dearly departed by body-boarding the

N
ecronet.

N
ever has it been more

Easy.
All you have to do is

E
nter the Soul

D
atabase, by taking a left-hand turn off the

Information
S
uperhighway and

Y
ou’re there. In the Land

Of the Virtual Dead.

U
know it makes sense.

Billy laid this sheet of
paper aside and read from the next one.

Dear Mr Barnes.

We at NECROSOFT would like to make you an
offer you will not wish to refuse. NECROSOFT is a rapidly expanding organization
on the cutting edge of computer technology. Our goals are high, but our aim is
true.

It is the intention of NECROSOFT to bring
about a new world order. Not in the political sense, but by creating a
situation where the individual can live In peace and harmony and happiness.