The Onion Eaters (14 page)

Late grey afternoon I took my leave from the pillared front and granite steps of Macfugger House. Her ladyship and Nails waving from the doorway. The four in hand rumbling up the drive, turning left, through a village of pub and shop. Past a blacksmith shoeing a horse’s hoof over his thick leather apron in the doorway. Up a winding gorse lined road and across the lonely windswept hills. In my hand a letter slipped me by a maid. Opening it as the sprawling fields and parklands of Macfugger House lay distantly behind.

The dark grey tall walls of Charnel Castle. First evening star above a black cloud moving in from the sea. Soft salty wind. Waves splash up on the steep coastal cliffs and spread out on
the sandy beach of the bay. Strange terrors out there
bobbing on the waters. Goodbye to the Macfugger grooms. Hello to the Charnel dwellers.

Clementine crossing the tiles of the great hall. Through the stray boulders surrounding a large pile of rubble. A yellow lamp glow illuminating where a bent head examines a hole perforating a stone arch. Franz. Kneeling and
picking
away rocks and soil, poking his finger through the little circle of blackness as he suddenly looks up.

‘I have unfortunately miscalculated. The excavation should have started perhaps another two yards to the east. There will not be much difficulty beginning a new digging.’

‘You’re breaking into the cellars.’

‘It was a mistake. But all my important discoveries have originated from blunders.’

‘I want the whole bunch of you out of here and the holes filled in and the tiles replaced.’

Franz slowly shrugging his shoulders. Holds the pick handle aside and dislodges clay from the rusty cutting edges. Looking back up and scratching his head.

‘Mr Clementine you do try my patience. It will be most difficult to reach conclusions on our explorations here if you take that attitude.’

‘I don’t want your conclusions. And where are those mambas.’

‘My colleague Erconwald was of the opinion that they should be released in the surrounding countryside.’

Clementine swiftly ascending the great staircase. Along the corridors. Up past the coffin chamber to the lofty fortified confines of the octagonal room. Change out of Nails Macfugger’s borrowed rather loose fitting shooting garments. Nice bone buttons on the flies. A letter on my bedside table. All in the chamber neat and tidy. No Elmer to greet me. Check under the bed for snakes. Open this letter. Addressed to owner or occupier.

Clementine seating himself. Taking up pen and crested paper. Reply to this first sign of hostilities. With a short résumé of casual internal impediments.

A knock. Someone standing in the shadows. A scouting party for the insurrectionists. Creeping to subdue me in my partial state of undress. To punch me under the
oxsters.
Thunder boots against my free swinging glands. Sell them later to the highest bidding pawnbroker, nothing like three gilded real ones to bring in the customers. While I hang ball less from the ramparts.

‘Ah am I disturbing you my dear Clementine. I have just come to say how glad I am to see you. To welcome you back. To indeed say all I can in humble greeting. It was with great excitement this morning that I witnessed ranunculous peeking with its yellow dewy flower just above
the blades of graminea to afford itself the rays of a friendly sun. May I inquire had you a pleasant stay with your friends. I trust you slept well with no ill images troubling you. And that the gods of pleasant inconsequentials made your
eyelids
quiver with all that is joyful in slumber. May nymphs diaphanously clothed anoint you. And might I trouble you to ask for a further moment of your time.’

‘It’s you.’

‘Ah. To be sure. Yes, it is I. I have been busy with
equations
and can state quite firmly now that the eta meson when discovered will reveal three new particles called pions. As we speak, low dark clouds tumble upon us from the sea. As we breathe new winds are born.’

‘Erconwald would you mind just cutting out the shit.’

‘Ah good person perchance you are aggrieved.’

‘Yes I am.’

‘But may I then kind sir hope that from a panorama of absurdities I might seek from you one harmless indulgence.’

‘What.’

‘Merely to request your gracious presence to dine tonight with me. And be forgiven that I must for this purpose avail myself of the appurtenances of your household. In this
connection
perhaps you might tell me of the whereabouts of the wine cellar.’

I took a solitary walk in the rear cloister darknesses of the Charnel. Where a growling Toro suddenly thundered past the other side of a wall in the bramble undergrowth. Seagulls sliding up and down purple hillsides of sky. One so quickly gets hungry alone and cold. Out here there may be creeping horrors unseen in the night. Collect up little outposts of hope. High in towers instead of low down in dungeons. Where I showed Erconwald in the doorway of the wine cellar. And stretched out on a bed of straw laid across a shelf of champagne bottles, the prostrate bodies of Percival and Miss Ovary side by side, garments disarrayed indelicately. Elmer on the floor licking up a puddle of port and thumping his tail as he nuzzles his big black guilty drunken nose at my shoe.

The dining room lit with candles. A bleary eyed Percival
bowing each time dropping his monocle and slightly
lurching
beside the door. Guests standing at their places. Two new ones. A sallow fat sweaty faced man whose name was whispered Bligh. And is it. Yes. My goodness, the sandy haired smoked salmon eating gentleman off the ship. All clapping as I entered. Followed by Percival to the head of the table where he seated me. My throat swallowing. Hold back the tears. What a terribly kind thing of Erconwald to do. With my dishes, food, servants and wine.

A fire throwing a gigantic turf glow into the room. Erconwald mid way down the table between the largest of the exprisoners and the Baron. Rose to my right. Mrs L K L at the opposite end flanked by newcomers. Franz on my left nods his head. And gives me a little shy smile.
Erconwald
standing.

‘Ladies and gentlemen I propose and I am sure you will second a toast to our most noble host.’

Charlene peeking from the serving door. A worried look across her face. As one stared down into the iced bowl of large and most perfect grains of beluga gutted from some sturgeon royal and far away. Sip this champagne bubbling palest gold. A tang of grape across the tongue. Rose smiling a big mouthful of teeth and growls as she packs the caviar on her shovel of toast and throws it back into the maw. My sandy haired friend nods and grins rejoicing in the
unteetotal
happiness.

A triumphant procession. Of Fred the pig. Roasted. His ears looking especially sad on his head decorated with holly leaves and berries. His poor trotter sticking up in the air from a platter lugged by Ena and Imelda. Trays of
steaming
pheasant and wild rice. Percival pouring magnums of champagne. Auntie see me now. The toast of this group. No one ever singled me out for a little flattery before. It’s nice.

Clementine excusing himself from table. Standing in the adjoining state room near a large doll’s house in the
darkness.
Tears tumble. Good to cry. All pours out. Trickles from the floods of terror. A signal switches the track when you head out to die. Slowly roll there. On the heavy
hopeless
wheels. Till a kiss tugs you back to the teeming rails of
life. A sound behind me. A figure. The lumpy shadow of Percival.

‘Ah God sir, it’s a grand evening. I’ve never come across the likes of such as that Mr Erconwald. A more kindly gentleman never trod earth. It was a surprise for you sir we had planned these few days. Wasn’t I down there below looking for the grandest of the vintages. Trying me best to tell the great from the grand and the grand from the great. Didn’t the struggle befuddle me. Took a good jolt of brandy to sharpen me senses. And didn’t both meself and Miss Ovary find ourselves prostrate in the line of duty. If it wasn’t for Elmer we’d been kilt by the rats.’

Turf smoke gently lowering from the ceiling. Clementine returning to table as the Baron raises his glass. His monocle flashing in the candle light. He smiles the saddest smile to me and bows his head. Must start some conversation. Just to slow the jaws grinding up the food and knives sawing on the plates. Commandeer Mrs L K L’s pistol for defence against the insurgents. Who when they advance stealthily towards the castle walls will have the shit bit out of them by mambas.

On come glacé apricots, shortbreads and gooseberry fool. Putlog Roulette grinning over every mouthful and
nodding
at Rose. Bottles pouring a golden Sauterne. Which widened a continuous smile on my sandy haired friend. And downed by other faces grim and silent. Putlog waving arms madly to encourage merriment. Where one could not even with hammer and chisel cut gladness on these faces. They glower and murmur as Erconwald rises. Knocks his knuckles against the mahogany.

‘Good people gathered here tonight pray may I beg a moment. It is with the greatest pleasure that I bring at this time a tiding to our most gracious, noble and esteemed host who has borne grave inconvenience with indulgent patience. Franz has found material within the confines of Charnel Castle containing valuable metallic constituents.’

Backs stiffening up and down the table. Franz bowing his head. Putlog shaking his face with yeses. The exprisoners looking at one another and clutching at their cutlery. My
sandy haired friend clapping discreetly. Mrs L K L sneezing and taking a hanky from her evening purse from which
clatters
her pistol into her finger bowl. Rose jumping to her feet. Raising an accusing finger down the table.

‘That cunt’s got her gun.’

‘Pray people, peace.’

‘Peace of my arse.’

‘Who said that.’

‘I said that.’

‘Is it a beating you want to make enough sauce out of you to add an inch to the seas.’

‘Beseech you good people. Bring clarity to this situation before we are haggard with broken clavicles.’

‘What is clarity.’

‘By God clarity is that force given to a fist sent in the direction of a face that when hit has no trouble seeing stars.’

‘Is that so. Well right now I’ll give you a sight of the universe.’

Erconwald went down under the avalanche. His pale hands raised to ward off the advancing bodies. Oscar the boy standing grinning ear to ear wiping the blade of a knife over and over again. A voice threatening the breakage of an ulna. Rose heading for Mrs L K L. The Baron holding the gun high over his head from grasping hands. One’s athlete’s foot is playing havoc between my toes otherwise I’d sort them out in a hurry. Bunch of them breaking my plates, skidding ruts across my mahogany, delighted with the demolition.

‘It’s ugsome in the Urals is it. You whore.’

‘For the love of God please restrain the aspersions.’

Lead Kindly Light himself standing up on his place mat. Shod in sandals, wielding a skewer thrusting it ceilingwards as his wife lowered her head and charged bovine like at the advancing Rose. Many enemies must have been made in my absence. Putlog undoing Lead Kindly Light’s sandal straps. Unsporting manoeuvres afoot aplenty. Only the Baron smiles with his pistol pointing at the ceiling and his cheese fork implanted in a chunk of cheddar.

‘It’s a woolling you want and it’s a woolling you’ll get.’

‘Stop the clarity.

‘By God the stars have only begun to be seen.’

Rose and Mrs L K L locked head on, each with hands buried deep in the other’s hair. Shaking and pulling.
Erconwald
on his back underneath the table his feet kicking out at the hands of the exprisoners. Franz with stethoscope pressed over his heart, thumping his free fist methodically into the ear hole of Bligh as the fat new arrival bends to separate the wrestling women. Percival with a lance in front of Clementine.

‘Nobody’s to lay a finger on the master of this house or he gets this where he’d rather have a lubricant.’

Lead Kindly Light aloft on the table raising a vial of liquid. Waving it slowly back and forth. The protagonists stilled. Desisting from their scratching, biting and kicking. All heed paid to L K L stocking footed on the mahogany among the finger bowls. Amid gruntings from the ladies. Thumping haymakers deep into each other’s haggis with one hand and removing handfuls of hair with the other.