Sprout Mask Replica (19 page)

No, as
I’ve already said, it didn’t.

What
did flash before his eyes was the vision of a woman, a kind of composite of all
the best-looking women he’d ever seen, and with it came this terrible
revelation that making love and not war was probably a very good idea indeed
and that he would have been far, far better off lying naked in bed with a woman
than laying naked in mud with a broken ankle.

My
friend still walks with a slight limp, he is married happily, has five children
and lives in Cornwall. He is no longer in the TA.

I ran down the alleyway
after Litany, who, on long tanned legs, was leaving me behind.

‘Slow
down,’ I called after her. ‘We have to find a doorway to nip into, we have to
have sex.’

This
remark slowed her down. To a stop.

‘What
did you say?’ she asked, turning and making a face I thought somewhat fierce.

‘They
just shot the barman, and we’ll be next,’ I explained, ‘so we should make love
now, while we still have the chance.’

‘You’re
kidding, right?’

‘At a
time like
this?
I’m deadly serious, it might be the last thing we ever
do.’

‘You
want me to take my clothes off in a doorway?’

It was
clear that this woman had never had a friend who was once in the TA. I’d have
to explain it to her later. ‘Forget about taking your clothes off,’ I told her.
‘I’ll settle for a blow job.’

And
then she kicked me. Right in the cobblers. I will never understand women as
long as I live.

‘If you
can’t run, hobble,’ she shouted, and away she went once more. And out through
the rear door of Fangio’s Bar came the fellows in the uniforms. The ones with
the big guns.

‘Halt!’
they shouted.

‘Screw
that!’ And I hobbled.

At the
end of the alleyway stood the limo, shiny and black, the stars reflected in its
roof. The stars, white dots upon a black background, just waiting to be joined
up to spell out the answer. The big answer.

Because
the pattern is there, right there, in the heavens.

‘Cut
that crap and get in.’ Litany threw open the passenger door. She was inside. At
the wheel.

‘It isn’t
crap,’ I said (once inside, with the door locked and the car in motion). ‘It’s
part of the big picture. Everything is part of a big picture. Everything links
together. We are all small links in an infinite chain, all cells in the body of
God.’

And
then she leaned over and smacked me in the mouth. ‘You’re delirious,’ she said,
by way of explanation. ‘You’re in shock. Now just get your head down, there’s
going to be some action.’

‘Oh
good. You’ve changed your mind—’

And she
hit me again!

I got
my head down and sulked as she drove. And she drove very fast. My pride felt as
injured as my privy parts. Well not quite so, but near as damn it. She took a
right here and a left there, although I didn’t know where here and there were.
And once she braked very hard and my head hit the dashboard.

She may
very well have braked hard again, but I don’t remember if she did, because I
had been knocked unconscious.

I awoke all alone in the limo

Parked upon grey mud flats

In the distance I saw

Several men, three or four,

They were searching for drowned sailors’ hats.

And the sea was a ribbon of mercury

That underlined the sky

And the sky was blue

As a blue suede shoe

And sweet as apple

Smack!
went a fist into the side of my face.

‘Pie,’
I said. ‘Ouch,’ I continued. ‘What did you hit me for this time?’

Litany
smiled in through the open car window. ‘The poetry,’ she replied. ‘It’s
appalling.’

‘It’s a
necessary evil. I nursed my grazed cheek, felt at my fat lip and gingerly
tested my testes. ‘I have to keep poetry in my head. To concentrate on.
Otherwise I have to compensate. Endlessly. For everything.’

‘Yes, I
know all about that.’

‘You
do?’
She opened the car door and I scrambled out onto the mud. ‘What do you
know?’

‘While
you slept, I hacked into your uncle’s computer. I know all about how you have
to compensate, maintain the balance of equipoise. It’s all in there, your
entire case history. The Ministry of Serendipity have been monitoring you for
years.’

‘They
never have?’

‘They
have too.’

‘Bastards!’

‘The
gigs you played last night. The jokes you told from the print-outs. That was
all part of a secret government experiment, to see whether you could actually
affect great changes by performing small actions. Be the mystical butterfly of
chaos.’

‘Secret
government experiment?’ I shook my head, which hurt my cheek and my fat lip,
but mercifully left my testicles in peace. ‘So are you saying that my brother
and my uncle both work for the M.o.S.?’

‘It’s
all there in the computer files.’

‘Does
it say what damage I caused? They said something about typhoons, disasters.’

Litany
smiled. It was a blinder of a smile. I could almost forgive her for all the
hitting. Almost, but not quite. ‘You didn’t cause any disasters,’ she smiled. ‘It
was a controlled experiment aimed specifically at creating fluctuations in the
world’s money markets.’

‘But
they said—’

‘Forget
what they said. They got it wrong.’

I shook
my head once more. But carefully this time. ‘They’re all a pack of bastards,’ I
declared. ‘And I’m not working for any of them.’

‘So
what do you intend to do?’

‘Well,
I’m not going home. I’ll stay here. Where is here, by the way?’

‘We’re
just outside Skelington Bay on the south coast.’

‘Well,
I’ll stay here. I’ll merge anonymously into the holiday crowd.’

‘It’s
not a bad idea,’ she said, with yet another smile, ‘except for one thing.’

‘And
what’s that?’

‘If you
want to merge anonymously, I think you’d better change out of your gold lamé catsuit.
Come on, I’ll drive you into town and buy you some new clothes.’

‘That’s
not a bad idea,’
I
said. ‘Except for one
thing.’

‘And
what’s that?’

‘Well,
if you’d care to look behind you, you’ll notice that the limo has now sunk up
to its roof in the mud.’

She
looked and she saw and she didn’t smile this time.

We walked into Skelington
Bay and I must confess I did get some pretty funny looks from the passing menfolk.
And some bitter ones too. But I could understand that, I mean there’s nothing
more annoying than seeing some jerk who’s got really bad dress sense with a
really beautiful woman on his arm, is there?

I didn’t
take to the town at all. Something felt wrong to me about the houses. If I’d
known anything at all about architecture, I suppose I would have spotted it
right away.

Much of
the town was Neo-Georgian, but given a vernacular style because the architects
had obviously vacillated between the comparatively robust forms of Palladian
composition and more attenuated compositions with slightly applied ornament, as
popularized by the brothers Adam, who designed in a much more virile manner.

But I
knew Jack Shit about architecture, so this didn’t cross my mind.

A fist
crossed my mouth again. Which I found mildly annoying.

‘And
what did you hit me for
this
time?’

‘Being
pretentious.’

‘Fair
enough.’

We
found a clothes shop (or boutique), and I let her choose me a shirt and
trousers. A friend of mine who’d actually had a girlfriend once, said that it’s
a really good idea to let your girlfriend choose your clothes. It shows her
that you trust her judgement and she’s also pleased because you look the way
she wants you to look.

How
vividly I recall him standing there in his pink flares and paisley-patterned
shirt waving goodbye to her as she went off laughing with the bloke in the
jeans and leather jacket.

Mind
you, he also told me that the best present you can buy a woman is a wristwatch,
because she’s bound to look at it several times a day and each time she does,
she’ll subconsciously think of you.

I came
out of the changing-room. ‘Are you sure these pink flares are really me?’ I
asked.

Litany
smiled. ‘They certainly are.’

‘I’d
like to go on to a jeweller’s next.’ I examined my reflection in the wall
mirror. ‘I’d like to buy you a wristwatch.’

‘That’s
all right, I already have one.’ And she looked down at it and a wistful look
came into her eyes.

I
settled for a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt and a leather jacket. I said I’d
owe her the money.

We went
looking for a place to stay and as we walked along I wondered over the events
of the night before and tried to draw a few conclusions.

Why was
it, I asked myself, that if this Ministry of Serendipity intended using me for
its own ends, they had sent storm troopers into Fangio’s, blowing up the place
and shooting-people? I wasn’t much use to them dead.

And
why, I also asked myself, had Litany risked her life helping me to escape?

Well,
the second one was easy. It was clear that the dame was wildly in love with me.
Clearly all the hitting was her way of showing affection.

I made
a mental note that as soon as I got her clothes off, I’d make a point of tying
her down to the bed.

We
checked into a hotel called the Skelington Bay Grande.

‘Double
room,’ I told the desk clerk.

‘Two
singles,’ said Litany.

‘Oh
yeah,’ I winked at her. ‘I get you. Two singles.’ She didn’t wink back.

We took lunch in the
Casablanca dining-suite. I had to go part vegetarian and only eat half of my
lettuce to compensate for the ghastly décor. The ceiling was so high that I had
to put four sugars in my coffee and take off one of my shoes.

We
shared a bottle of
Chateaubriand
over the starters. Then a carafe of
Chaudfroid
with the main course.

To
accompany the cheese and biscuits we each had a glass of
Vol au Vent.

And to
bring the meal to a successful conclusion, two balloons of chilled
eau de
vie.

Well,
one out of four wasn’t bad for a waiter who only did basic French.

A smack
in the ear informed me that I was being pretentious again.

‘Just
you see here,’ I said, which wasn’t easy, considering what I’d just drunk. ‘I’m
getting fed up with all this hitting. What say we dispense with all this
foreplay, go upstairs and do it till we fall unconscious?’

She
sipped from a schooner of
Mal de Mer
I’d failed to mention earlier and
shook her beautiful head.

‘Why
not?’ I asked, suavely. ‘You’re obviously gagging for it.’ ‘Oh I am. But not
with you.’

‘Why
not?’ I reiterated, not quite so suavely this time. She smiled again. (I was
beginning to find the habit more than just mildly annoying.) ‘Look, you’re a very
nice guy and everything, but, well, you’re—’

‘What?’

‘You’re
too old.’
‘What?’

‘I’m
sorry, but there it is.’ ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘I don’t
know, forty, forty-five, maybe.’

‘More
like fifty,’ said the waiter, pouring me a pint of
vichyssoise.

‘You
keep out of this,’ I told him.

‘No
offence,
monsieur,
but in
labial France
such practices are an
everyday affair. Beautiful young woman, dirty old man. We think nothing of such
things.’

‘I’m so
pleased to hear it. But surely you mean
la belle France.
Doesn’t labial
mean—’

‘Trust
me,
monsieur,
I know exactly what it means.’

‘Do you
know what bugger off means?’

‘Indeed
I do.’ The waiter bowed by lifting his nose and departed from our table.

‘Now
just you listen,’ I said to Litany. ‘I’m not forty or forty-five or anything
like that. I just look old for my age.’

‘So how
old are you really?’

‘I’m
fifteen.’

She
gave me a look. It was a long look. A long long look. It was a look so long
that had it been a willy it would have belonged to none other than Long King
Dong himself. ‘Fifteen?’ she said. ‘Fifteen?’