The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (22 page)

And
soon…

We’re
back in the car park,’ I said.

‘Should
I try another way?’

‘I
think so, yes.’

Roger
drove us out once more. He took a left turn this time, and soon we were passing
a branch of Next, a branch of Gap and a branch of the Body Shop. And then we
were back on the one-way system and back in the car park.

‘You
prat,’ I said to Roger. ‘Let me drive.’

And so
I drove. Out of the car park, second turn on the right, past the branch of
Next, past the branch of Gap…

‘What
the fuck is this?’ I asked as I drove back into the car park.

‘Always
the same,’ said Roger. ‘I was hoping you might have been different.’

‘I
might?’

Well, I’ve
tried all the other inmates. But no sod seems to know how to get out of this
town.’

We’ll
walk,’ I said.

‘Tried
it.’

‘You’ve
tried walking?’

‘Dozens
of times, but it’s always the same, no matter how far I walk, I always end up
here. That’s why they’re so lax on security I suppose, no-one can go anywhere.’

‘That
is bloody absurd. If you keep on walking you must get
somewhere.’

‘Not
from here,’ said Roger. ‘I think it’s like some kind of Mobius strip. No matter
which way you go you always end up in the same place.’

We’ll
walk,’ I said.

And we
did.

We
walked for hours, this way and that way and round about. But no matter where we
walked or how far we walked, we always ended up right back at the hospital.

It must
have been around the twelfth time when we returned to find Nurse Cecil waiting
for us.

‘Your
lunch is getting cold,’ he said. So we went in for lunch.

Will you be having another
go later?’ Nurse Cecil asked. ‘I could make you up some sandwiches and a flask
of coffee if you want.’

‘Most
amusing,’ I said, but I wasn’t amused.

‘Feathered
wings,’ said Roger, ‘we might try feathered wings.’

After lunch (mine was
porridge, Roger’s was T-bone steak and chips), I sat in the recreation room
pondering my lot. Certain thoughts entered my head and I kept them there. The
morning had been like one of those terrible dreams where you’re desperately
trying to get somewhere but you can’t. You miss the bus and the train and your
feet don’t work properly and you wake up in a right old state flapping your
hands about and going ‘No, no, no.’

There
obviously had to be some way of escaping from this hospital and this nightmare
town. But obviously it wasn’t the obvious way.

Which
left…

My behaviour all the next
week was exemplary. I mopped floors and smiled politely at the male nurses and
the doctors, I even shared a joke or two with Cecil. I watched Roger as he came
and went, but I never ventured out again into the car park.

The doctor said I was
making progress. Well, he didn’t actually say it, but— ‘Tell me about the
Necronet,’ the doctor said.

‘What
can I tell you?’ I asked. ‘In theory it is a virtual world created by computer
technology. The personalities and memories of people can be downloaded into
it. The world in there would appear as real to them as the world out here.’

‘And
you believe that you entered this virtual world?’

‘The
way to a man’s belief is through confusion and absurdity,’ I said. ‘Jacques
Vallée said that. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought over the last week.’

‘And
what conclusions have you come to?’

I
shrugged in my straitjacket. Well, take the security video for instance. That
would appear to show me murdering the young businessman. I could argue that
there are numerous ways it might have been faked, but it is doubtful that
anyone would believe me.’

‘The
question is surely what
you
believe.’

‘I
should believe the evidence of my own eyes. Even if it conflicts with what I
remember.’

‘Or
think you remember.’

‘Exactly.
And there we have the problem. Is my memory accurate? Perhaps I did kill the
young man, but I’ve blanked it from my memory. It’s possible.’

‘More
than possible,’ said the doctor.

‘Indeed.
My problem appears to be in establishing what is actually real and what isn’t.
You see within the Necronet I had a digital memory, I could call up any past
experience and instantly replay it, be right in the place it happened. Solid
and real. I no longer have a digital memory, therefore I must conclude that I
am back in reality. That this hospital is in the real world.’

‘Very
good.’

‘And
yet, when I tried to escape from the hospital last week I found that no matter
where I went I came right round in a circle and ended up here.’

‘This
town is a planner’s nightmare,’ said the doctor.

I
nodded. ‘Nightmare,’ I said. ‘My thoughts entirely. Or like one of those
computer games where you’re in a maze and unless you can work out the secret
passwords, and get the energy and stuff, you just go round and round in circles
for ever.’

‘A
rather unfortunate analogy,’ said the doctor. ‘Considering your circumstances.’

‘I
agree, because if I was still inside the computer simulation, I
would
have
the digital memory.’

‘Exactly,’
said the doctor.

‘Unless…

‘Unless
what?’

‘Unless
my digital memory was being suppressed.’

‘Oh
dear,’ said the doctor, reaching towards the little button on his desk.

‘No
please, bear with me just one minute. Imagine this scenario. Imagine that I
never left the Necronet. That this is not the real world and not a real
hospital.’

What a
pity,’ said the doctor. ‘And you have been behaving yourself so well. I thought
the tablets were really beginning to help.’

‘I
stopped taking the tablets,’ I said. ‘I haven’t taken them for the last week.’

The
doctor shook his head sadly, and his finger pressed upon the button.

‘I
believe that the tablets are memory suppressants,’ I continued. ‘Little
silicone chips with programmes that deny me access to my own memories. I
believe that if I had my digital memory back, all I would have to do to escape
from this place would be to think my way out of it. Imagine myself somewhere
else, somewhere I used to be, and I’d be out. Gone. In the twinkling of an eye.’

The
office door opened and Nurse Cecil loomed. ‘Kindly take the gentleman back to
his room,’ said the doctor. ‘And double his dosage from now on.’

Nurse
Cecil stood with an idiot grin on his face.

‘What
gentleman?’ he asked.

Run of the Place

They’d given Old Arthur the run of the place,

And you should have seen the smile on his face,

As
he walked in his
dressing gown, staring in space,

As
he whistled the
Warsaw Concerto.

They’d given Old Arthur a new woollen hat,

He looked pleased as Punch as he went out in that,

With his book of the prophets and raggedy cat,

That he knew as Louisa Alberto.

They’d given Old Arthur a picture of Bog,

Which he kept on the shelf with his seed catalogue,

Some small paper mice and a nice china dog,

That would snuffle your ankles and smell you.

They’d given Old Arthur the key to the gate,

Which was not all that shrewd, as I’ll tell if you’ll
wait.

For he wandered outside and was killed by a truck,

Which quite spoiled his day, I can tell you.

16

Be reasonable. Demand the impossible.

SITUATIONIST
GRAFFITO

The followers of the John
Frum Cargo Cult sat upon their homemade airstrip and stared into the azure sky.

‘John
Frum, he come,’ said one. ‘Bring cargo, all be rich.’

‘Soon,
now,’ said another. ‘Real soon, now.’

‘I’ve
been expecting him for quite some time,’ said a native with a hat.

‘Expecting
who?’ asked a fourth, a surly fellow with a human finger bone through his nose.

The
first three natives looked up at him in awe.

‘John
Frum,’ they said. ‘John Frum.’

‘Oh,
him. He’ll be along. Just you wait.’

And so they waited.

And the
next day they waited again.

As they
did for the next two days.

And the
next.

One native said, ‘It won’t
be long now. ‘Another said, ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

Another
one said, ‘Where’s the bloke with the hat gone?’

About a week later one of
them said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if John Frum came at any time now.’

‘Nor
would I,’ said another. ‘Has anyone seen the bloke with the bone lately?’

About three weeks after
that, on a fine sunny morning, John Frum did come back. But, disappointed that
there was no-one around to welcome him, he went away again, leaving a note
which said that he would definitely return at a later date.

‘There,’ said a native. ‘I
told you he’d come back.’

‘And he
could come back again at any time now,’ said another.

A
native with a bald head pointed to the sky. ‘Isn’t that him?’ he said.

But it wasn’t.

And so they decided to
wait.

I came ashore on the east
side of the island. The sea was as warm and blue as I had imagined it to be.

I
remembered, as a child, having read Arthur Thickett’s book on the Melanesian
cargo cults John
Frum He Come: An Anthropological Study of Cargo Culture,
and
enjoying it very much. In fact I could now recall every single word of that
book, as I could with all the others I had read in my life. Over fifteen
thousand books. Fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty-seven, to be precise.
And not a Johnny Quinn among them.

I wasn’t
angry any more, but I was determined. Determined to escape from the Necronet
and bring Billy Barnes to justice.

‘Anger
is one of the sinews of the soul,’ wrote Thomas Fuller in his book
The Holy
State and the Profane State.
On page fifty-three actually, which was the
last page I got up to, before getting bored and turning instead to
The
Beano.
But I’m sure he was right, it was one of them. My father once said, ‘If
you’re not angry, you’re not alive,’ and I can remember exactly when he said
it. So I was a little bit angry, but not so much as to let it cloud my
judgement.

True, I
was still trapped in the Necronet, but here I was not quite the twat I had been
outside in the real world. Here I could recall the consequences of every action
I had ever taken. So, surely, here I could never make the same mistake twice.

I
sloshed up the beach, took off my shirt and spread it on the sand to dry. And
then I took off the rest of my clothes and sat naked, soaking up the sun.

It was
pretty blissful.

But was
it safe?

I had
taken considerable care with my choice of destination before I thought my way
out of the hospital. I wanted somewhere really obscure, the least most obvious
of all the least most obvious, least most obvious places they’d expect me to
choose. Somewhere they couldn’t track me to. I decided upon this island because
although I’d read the book about it and taken in all the detail and description
of the place, I didn’t actually know exactly where it was. I couldn’t have
found it on a map, because I’d never seen it on a map. I had to be’ safe here.
For a while at least. And from here I could plot my escape.

In
comfort.

Arthur
Thickett’s book had been written in 1961 when the John Frum cargo cult had a
great many followers. The cargo cults began in earnest during the Second World
War, which was the first time white men had arrived on the islands in any large
numbers. The natives watched the airstrips being built, and the conning towers
constructed. They looked on as the white men landed their aircraft, opened up
the cargo bays and brought out cargo. Cargo, marvellous things, things that the
natives had never seen before. And the natives simply sat down and reasoned it
out. And their reasoning was impeccable. Clearly the white men were, if not
gods themselves, certainly in cahoots with the gods. And so if they did as the
white men had done, they could get some of this God-given cargo for themselves.
And so they constructed pretend airstrips and conning towers and dressed
themselves in pretend uniforms, and marched about saying things like ‘Roger Wilko’
as they’d heard the white men say.