Satan Wants Me (36 page)

‘Of the investigators who have pierced even for a moment the magic veil of its glamour ecstatic many have been appalled, many disappointed. Few have dared to crush in arms of steel this burning daughter of the Jinn; to ravish from her poisonous scarlet lips the kisses of death; to force her serpent-smooth and serpent-stinging body down to some infernal torture-couch, and strike her into spasm as the lightning splits the cloud-wrack, only to read in her infinite sea-green eyes the awful price of her virginity – black madness …. ’

In a way, Crowley was a great man, one of the forerunners of the Spirit of the 60s indeed, but this stuff was just so over the top that I had to desist from reading more. Sally and Maud were leaning against one another and giggling fit to bust. For a few moments it was a really good scene and I felt like the Old Man of the Mountains secluded in his paradise garden with a couple of members of his harem. The laughter got madder and madder and I was laughing too and I was vaguely aware of being possessed by the laughter, as if I had been invaded by a demonic Thing. I experienced it as an entity which did not care what I did, or whether I lived or died. I was merely a vehicle for laughter, to be discarded once the Laughing Thing, hunting for another victim, had passed on its way.

This happened – the laughter passing, that is – when Maud wiped her eyes and tried to straighten up enough to talk. I believe that she was trying to prolong the mirthful spirit of things …

‘Sally, listen to this! This is really good! A man goes into a pub and he has got an insect with him. I have forgotten what insect it was, but that does not matter. Say it was a dragonfly – no hang on a minute – the insect has got to have legs. A cricket then. A cricket has definitely got legs. So anyway he says to the man – I mean the man he has met at the bar – “I have established that insects hear with their legs.” Then, the other man, the man he is talking to, asks “How have you worked that out?” Now, let me think … the other man says “As you can see, this cricket has no legs and when I ask it to move, it does not …”’

‘Hang on a moment,’ Sally interrupted. ‘Just a moment ago, you were saying that the cricket definitely did have legs. Are you sure you don’t mean that he had a dragonfly? That would make more sense.’

Maud was trying to work out why Sally was not right about this, when I tried to help her by pointing out that in fact dragonflies did have legs, contrary to what Sally was insinuating. However, this only seemed to make Maud more confused.

‘No, what I meant is that crickets in general do have legs, but this particular cricket did not have legs, because the man in the pub – the first man in the pub – had taken them off in order to demonstrate that crickets hear with their legs, because they don’t move when they are told to when their legs are taken off. Er … only I think I have told it slightly wrong. The cricket had its legs on when it was brought into the pub – ’

‘That would make it more like the rest of the cricket species,’ Sally added helpfully.

‘But then the man took the legs off to prove the point … But anyway, you get the point. He was not thinking logically, you see.’

Sally thought about it and, having thought about it, she was seriously pissed off.

‘That is just so dumb. It’s a real downer. Anyway, I don’t see how else the man could demonstrate that crickets hear with their legs. I certainly don’t believe that they hear with their ears, because I have never seen a cricket with ears.’

Maud was cast down. I thought of challenging Sally on how many crickets she has seen in her life, for I don’t believe that she has seen any, except for Jimminy Cricket in the
Pinocchio
film, but then I decided against saying anything. So, suddenly we were all silent once more and Sally set to work, rolling the second joint of the evening.

I was sleepily nodding to myself and thinking that Farnham was a good place to lie low in when I dozed off.
Yet lie how low? Deep, deep, deep below the black waters. These waters which came rushing up from beneath me and engulfed not only me but also the whole of the lost town of Farnham. Slow, silent and alone I passed between the columns of moonlight which descended through the blackness and then I floated away from those refracted shafts of brightness, down the dark submarine snickets and alleyways which were beyond the reach of any illumination and consequently, from time to time, I blundered against barnacle-encrusted walls and doors. Once I emerged again into the High Street, I noticed how the moonlight conferred a dead-white glitter on the shop-fronts. I found that with some difficulty I could shimmy my way up to roof-level and, turning backwards from whence I had swum, I observed the scarlet roof of the Maltings, shining as bright as Satan’s Pandemonium. I observed everything. I remarked without regret how a filthy silt was drifting up to cover the lower shelves in the public library and how a ceaseless flow of bubbles rose from decomposing books. I visited the abandoned tennis-courts where shoals of minnows passed backwards and forwards through their netting. I saw without surprise that the familiar country streams and rivulets continued to flow quite unimpeded by the heavy tides of black water above them. I paddled over the foliage of the hop-fields which undulated with lazy menace, like the weed-banks of a dreadful Sargasso Sea, and beyond the hop fields I swam out to the halcyon peace of Surrey lawns. Everything was perfectly silent, except for the muffled tolling of church bells which, moved by the dark tides, never stopped and which kept time with the beating of my terrified heart. Otherwise the place was silent, abandoned, asleep in time, so that here where I am is not only now but forever August 7th, 1967. The spires of the churches and the towers of the Castle strain towards the surface so very far above. Deep, deep down below, I can only dream of flicking and kicking my way up until finally I might break through the surface and gaze on the limitless expanse of water rolling on forever under its dancing net of moonlight. The trouble is that I have water on the brain and it is this which makes me so heavy.

Such was my dream. Yet, when I come to think about it, I do not actually know whether I had this dream or not. It is only Pyewhacket, the hand which sees itself as a writer in its own right, which tells me that I had it and, once again, I fear that Pyewhacket has a mind of its own, not really mine at all. It is a warm summer evening, but I feel cold now. I had thought that I had escaped that hand, that literary voice. Somehow it has found me again. Perhaps Farnham will not be such a good place to lie low in after all.

I opened my eyes on my two beautiful houris. They were bent over the Indian tray and talking quietly to one another and I heard the raven-haired one whisper to the blonde,

‘You have beautiful hair. I should love to do your hair for you.’

But then Sally, suddenly suspicious that she was being buttered up, pulled away. The second joint was now ready for circulation. We passed it amongst one another without talking. I was not feeling better for my submarine doze. Also, I think I was feeling a bit guilty at having pressed Maud to join us in smoking dope. It was as if Sally and I had colluded in debauching this pathetically innocent girl. Maud is so eager to please and so young. But then we three are all very young. Everything is before us. The juices of youth are so fierce within us. Straights may suppose that we take dope to get high. Not so. Sally and I are high on being young – most of the time anyway. We take dope to come down.

The third time the joint came round, it was practically down to its nasty-tasting, cardboard roach, and I stubbed it out.

‘Gosh! Well, that was quite fun I suppose,’ said Maud as, yet again, she ferreted about for stuff in her handbag. ‘And, thank you, but I don’t think that I will ever take dope again. I would not like to become dependent on it. I do think that one can have a good time without being hooked on anything.’

‘Maud, you are being ridiculous again,’ said Sally patronisingly. ‘I’ve been taking hash practically every day for over a year now and I’m not addicted.’ Then, having thought about what she had just said, Sally got the giggles again.

Maud looked doubtfully at Sally.

‘Hash is less addictive than alcohol,’ I reassured Maud. Then unthinkingly, I added. ‘The same goes for LSD. That’s not addictive at all.’

Sally’s eyes lit up.

‘Yeah! You have got to trip. You’ll love it, Maud. Tripping is a fantastic buzz. Tomorrow, if it’s sunny, we’ll all take a trip together. It’s great, if it’s sunny, cos’ it will make the sunlight brighter.’

I can see that, on one level, Sally’s enthusiasm for LSD is perfectly genuine. She is always proselytising on behalf of ‘the miracle drug’. She really does believe that it is tragic that it is only a relatively small number of heads, like her and me, who have discovered what it can do. However, at another level, I know that Sally was pressing LSD onto Maud in order to wind her up and, if tomorrow, Maud did have a bad trip, Sally would not be at all displeased.

Indeed, Maud looked terrified.

‘Can’t I just watch?’

‘No. As long as you are here, you’ve got to participate. You have to see what we see. Peter and I will serve as spirit guides on your trip. LSD is a friendly drug. It is thanks to LSD that you are here at all. It was the drug that warned Peter that you were in danger. So you definitely owe it something.’

Well, those were the main events of the day. Eventually we decided that the midges were too much for us and we went inside. Sally decided to cook Welsh-rabbit. Maud went over to stand beside Sally in the tiny kitchen and told her how she wished she had learned to cook. Would Sally teach her? But Sally was not interested in talking about cooking. Instead, smiling gently, she started reminiscing about former trips that she had taken.

That night Sally was extra-demanding in bed and she allowed me little sleep. But even when Sally had her legs wrapped tight around my head, I could hear Maud weeping in the next room.

I woke up before Sally and went out to the sitting room – I mean lying room. Maud was nowhere to be seen and I briefly panicked that she might have left us. But then I saw that her dresses and underwear and lots of magazines were strewn all over the place. The back-door was open. I went out and stood on its step. In the sharp-edged light of early morning, I saw Maud moving swiftly from tree to tree. She punched the air and wheeled about to kick at trees, time and again just failing to connect with their trunks. Then she abruptly plunged to her knees and started knee-walking backwards and forwards across the grass. She moved at an eerie pace, like a dwarf on amphetamines. After a while, she somersaulted back onto her feet and resumed combat with her invisible adversaries. Maud was in her karate kit, coarse white trousers and a loose jacket secured by a brown belt. In her fighting gear, she appeared amazingly relaxed and graceful – not clumsy at all.

After watching for a while, I went inside and started tidying Maud’s things up. Sally emerged from the bedroom before I had finished.

‘You are not Maud’s slave, you know,’ she said. ‘Maud will have to pull her weight around here. Either that, or she will have to go. Where is she, anyway?’

I nodded towards the back door and together we went and looked out. Maud had finished her karate exercises (katas, I think they may be called) and we were just in time to see her formally bowing towards the trees.

‘Weird,’ breathed Sally.

Then Maud came in and changed out of her karate kit into a longish black dress decorated with a pattern of gold medallions. While Maud was in the lavatory, Sally was on the attack again.

‘That dress must have cost a hundred pounds. It blows my mind. Where does a Camden hairdresser get the bread for something like that?’

‘It is easy, I suppose, if you are straight,’ I replied. ‘Maud doesn’t spend money on clubs, records, mystical treatises, or dope. What is not cheap, on the other hand, is being any kind of hippy.’

Sally did not look convinced.

‘I think it’s rich parents,’ she said.

Maud had a huge breakfast. While she ate, she talked vaguely of looking for work in some hairdressing salon in town.

‘So you are staying in Farnham then?’ asked Sally.

‘Oh yes.’

The trip was scheduled for the afternoon. Maud spent much of the morning looking up at the sky, visibly willing rain-clouds to appear, but to no avail. We do not usually have a cooked lunch, but since we were going to be tripping that afternoon, Sally would not necessarily be up to anything very much that evening. She was singing ‘The sun has got its hat on’, as she cooked us an egg-curry. We ate on the mattress with the plates balanced precariously on our knees. The curry was frightful and the grit of the curry powder kept getting lodged between our teeth, so we all had lots of orange juice to wash it down.

For pudding, Sally produced just two acid-laden sugar cubes – one for her and one for me. Maud looked relieved.

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I’d just decided that I could not go through with it. I know it is weedy of me. But I am utterly terrified of going mad and saying or doing the wrong things. Besides right now I am not on tip-top form. In fact I feel a bit peculiar.’

‘I am not surprised,’ said Sally. ‘That will be the trip coming on. I thought that you would try to back off, so I put your cube in your orange juice. It’s probably best that you go and lie down.’ Then she added gleefully, ‘You’ve got a date with Mr Mickey Finn.’

Maud moaned. Her hands went briefly to her throat, as if she would prevent the passage of the deadly substance into her body. Then she moved away to the edge of the mattress and sat with her arms hugging her knees. She did indeed look like she was waiting to go mad. I went over and knelt before her.

‘Don’t worry, Maud,’ I said. ‘The first trip is usually a good one.’

‘Yeah, it’s quite rare to get the horrors on the first trip,’ added Sally.

I have gone into the bedroom to fetch this notebook, so that, as scientist of the invisible, I can record whatever may transpire on this trip. Now I am going to persuade Maud to come out into the garden with me and look at the grass. That is bound to be a good scene.