The Onion Eaters (23 page)

‘Shut up Martha, that’s no kind of talk.’

‘Charlie had the biggest thing I ever did see.’

‘Now Martha that ain’t no way to talk in front of all these good folk.’

Clementine rising from knees. Eyeballs covered in dust blown through the keyhole. Bag hooked over an arm. Feel the way onward. A look of astonishment forever on my face. People always at their best in a memory. And when I’ve tucked away all these recent months. Look back then on one vast invasion of privacy. Sending castle ghosts
running
for their lives. Dreamt last night a man passed me on a street corner. Said sir your light tan shoes are
unforgivable
. I walked six miles in a circle mumbling bitter replies. Woke up. Felt my toes sticking chilled out of the bed. Licked by Elmer. Who leads his own life these days.
Chewing
cow flop and chasing his tail.

Clementine climbing the ladder to the hay loft. Sounds up there. Gloria in another orgasm. Or doing gymnastics. Owl hoots. Send the rats for cover. Who dat dere. One on top of another. Legs scissored around a pair of small
moonlit
buttocks. Vibrating like the hammers of hell. That fuck pig of multiplicities. That L K L.

Bloodmourn picked a speck of fluff from my lapel and smiled. He rubbed hands as the others bowed. The hairy exprisoner drove me up the stony winding road to wait for the train. Coming choo choo out from under the pink grey striped sky. The countryside stilled. A spiral of smoke from Clarence’s cottage. The hoof sounds of Tim sweeping away down the centre of the road.

Erconwald gave me five pounds. Folded the big white note away deep in my pocket. And looked at it again as the
platforms
of the stations swept by. Across lands haunted green and lonely by dark hedges and solitary trees. Man at a gate with a donkey. Woman looks up from a sack in the fields. Arms wave. Hello. Goodbye. To the click clack
heading
towards a creeping grey horizon.

Smoky shadowy terminus. Weather burnt faces lugging bags tied with straps and strings. Lost eyes staring around the metropolis. A lamp light with a yellow glow on a wet gleaming street. Horse cab at the curb. Take it clip clop along a wall by the river. Turning right up a steep cobbled hillside. Broken windows flickering with firelight. Down a street of bleak darkened commercial houses. In there a shop window full of gentleman’s gear. For horses, sheep and
shooting.
One bank after another. And into that one there with the grey granite pillars. I will go tomorrow with my slip of green paper. From Lady Gail Allouise Trudy Macfugger.

Strange to be all dressed up. For a city. To feel warm under cloth. Albeit the toes are cold. And the eye looks for some warmly lit snuggery. Where waits a plate of cheese and glass of wine. Just stand here at this space between the mahogany partitions. And refreshment slides across the marble.

‘And may I have some pickled onions too.’

‘Certainly.’

Clementine taking sips of wine and chunks of cheese. Teeth sink through the red soft tang. Such a relief from the hungering around the castle halls. Rid of the many mouths. To privately pay attention to my own. With just a
barman
on a stool reading the evening newspaper. Turning over the pages. See great black headlines there. If the
gentleman
would only hold it a bit higher. Ah. Thank you.

Fourteen silver voiced children and their choir master were rescued Tuesday night during a force nine gale. The little ones having set forth with their leader in an open boat as a treat were in difficulties as they were swept by the tide out to sea where many mariners over the years have come to grief off the western coast. Four brave stalwart men led by Commander Bloodmourn and assisted by Brevet Major Macfugger, V.C., M.O.H., Dr Franz Pickle, B.F.B. and the Baron Von Freeze single handedly launched the large motor yacht, Novena, which has been out of commission for some years and set forth to the rescue. The brave gentlemen were staying as the guests of Clementine of The Three Glands, the owner of Charnel Castle who remained behind to alert the lifeboat. As the stout hearted made their way through the treacherous seas with their mast broken and decks awash they refused to turn back when nearly submerged by a monster wave and forged onwards to the
distressed
boat without heed for their own personal safety.

Bartender turning the page. What a lot of really awful people. Nobody gives a good god damn anymore. About the real truth or anything, just so long as they look good
themselves
. Elbow you out of the limelight. In shame if possible.

‘Bartender, please can I have another glass of wine.’

‘And why not.’

Lights softer on the eyes. As wine cheers the spirit.
Bartender
pours with a smile from the corners of his mouth and twinkling eyes. Could say that was me you read about. I was there. Really with them. Out on the waves. But they cheated me out of the publicity.

Clementine setting off with gladstone bag. Walking up a narrow street of shop windows. To look into this one with medical instruments. A skeleton hanging there in the dark. Faint smell of roasted coffee bean. Whirr of cycles passing on the wooden blocks of the road. Turn left. A high fence and park across the street. Any door now. Will be
Erconwald’s
laboratory.

Clementine pressing a white ceramic button in a round brass circle. Waiting. Pressing again. Folks wrapped in scarves go by. It’s late. I’m tight. I’m cold. Let me in. I can easily settle down among the test tubes. Not a sound inside. Drive me out of my own castle. Then give me an address where there’s no reply. Stagger back out on the paving stone. Head for an hotel. In damp socks and cold feet.
Behind
this woman ahead whispering to a cat.

Clementine walking by the dark coated figure. As she leans by the curb coaxing this furry creature across a puddle. With a voice one has heard before. Turning at my footsteps to look up. Gracious me. Veronica.

‘Look who’s here. In town from his country seat. I was just beginning to feel rather lonely, making friends with this cat. Will you buy me a drink.’

In the corner of a small dim lit crowded bar. Around the corner from a cheese shop. Clementine taking out an orange ten shilling note. To purchase large brandies. As we sit
together
in a tight corner. Upon this reunion. Just when with the damp bleakness of this town the soul was freezing up. To see a face I know nearly laughing. Gay and gurgling. Free of pox and roller skates. Crossing her legs. Pulling her skirt down on white cold knees. Her strong big fingers around her glass. If the world is empty. The smile of
another
fills it up.

‘I got a positively devastating note from Gail. She was as it’s said these days slugged in the kisser by Jeffrey. Poor girl. Jealousy. Almost like my former nasty husband who can scratch but not punch. I was having a séance with an old old friend. And we afforded ourselves the privacy of an hotel. Just as we were rather savouring our quiet retreat who should come raging up the stairs pounding on our door but
Roger. Demanding to find his wife. I had in my altogether to nip outside on the window ledge. Clinging to god knows what. While Roger with too much to drink and exceedingly riled stormed around the room searching everywhere. I was subjected, totally without garments, to the most harrowing experience. A group hooting, jeering and laughing collected in the street below. I shan’t forget it but how good to see you. Bygones are bygones. This brandy is quite the saving of me. I was on my way back to my flat. Awfully depressed. I get that way. Going from chemist shop to chemist shop all day. I don’t know what these people do for sanitary napkins. I just can’t get an order. But now you’re here, you must let me put you up.’

‘I couldn’t impose.’

‘I insist. I really do. I only live ten minutes away.’

‘Erconwald gave me the address of his laboratory.’

‘But my dear boy you could never stay in that zoo.’

‘He said there was a cubby hole with a couch.’

‘There’s an operating table and a dissecting slab.’

‘O.’

‘You must come home with me.’

‘That’s very kind.’

‘I’m always kind. Have all the scars to show for it. But dear boy. I can’t believe it. I’m really so glad to see you. You’re so young and well profiled, just as Gail says. Would it be awful of me to ask for another brandy.’

The bar packing tighter and tighter. No room left to stand. Drinks held up to the sides of cheeks. Outside were all the wet empty streets. And bubbling within. The voices smiles and deep throated laughter. Her hair swept back in a flowing curve and falling down around her shoulders. With white scalp in a parting down the middle. Tiny speck of dandruff there.

‘I may call you Clayton, mayn’t I. Well Clayton. Ha ha. Ho ho. Shall we have a party. Yes. We shall.’

Weaving along the granite pavements. A group of dark figures armed with parcels. Veronica dancing out in front as they follow in her wake. Take up the rear lugging my gladstone bag. Introduced to one hundred sudden friends
in the city. Happy and forgiving. Gay and carefree.
Offering
drink, cigarettes and sympathies. All the days heavy hearted beneath the lead roofed battlements, shivered by dinner blasts, sopping at sea rescues and cold toed in debt. Now swept away warmly by good fellowship.

Up the steps of a terraced green doored tall house.
Between
pillars and iron black railings. Ascending more steps at the end of a long hall. Round and round landings. To one last at the top. Guests pour in under the eaves. To snug rooms. One leading to another. Patchwork quilts. Vases of flowers. Corks popping. Strife dispersed. And clacking them just beneath her ears Veronica cavorting with castanets.

Gentlemen waltzing. Others wincing. One woman and all these men. Discussing architecture. Sitting on each other’s lap. How tall and wide is yours. Hands into flies. Let me see. Tell by tugging and pulling. As one repairs backwards to the kitchen. And stands dithering with the fingertips
playing
wildly on the lapels. Maybe find some hot milk purring on the stove. Warm me up after a long journey.

‘O there you are. You must come out and see Victor do his dance. He contorts in his altogether.’

Clementine with a glass of milk. And a cookie. A naked gentleman against the book case. Gyrating to the click of Veronica’s castanets. And blushing shyly at his onlookers. Two chaps one sitting upon the other. They look up from a large scrap book. And back again. Turning with wide
smiling
eyes the pages. Of suspended perpendicular and
horizontal
pudenda. One could be back in one’s innocent castle. With straightforward serpents, bullfights and Gloria playing her instant orgasm. Where my last instruction to Percival was. When anyone asks again at the castle if the boss is in. Say yes. Deeply. In debt. And does not want to be
disturbed.

The floor creaking under the weight of the bodies.
Veronica
twirling between the upright gentlemen tickling momentarily wherever there waved a tool. Till a fist,
appearing
through a cream panel of the door and followed by a big black greasy head with the face smiling, stopped the gathering dead.

‘How are you all in there.’

A big bellied gentleman entering, a belt across his navel. The rest of his clothing tucked up under his arm. A small spiky penis wagging as he elbowed his way up to Veronica. Planting a big smacking kiss on her cheek.

‘How are you Veronica.’

‘You did not have to break my door.’

‘It was only a friendly act to get into the festivities
without
frightening you with my sudden appearance all at once. Now for the love of God will you cheer up before there’s need of chastisement.’

‘You’re a horrid dirty person.’

‘I am not.’

‘You shat on my floor last time you were here. It still smells where I had to clean it up.’

‘My good lady I’m too flabbergasted to deny such an outrageous accusation. So I won’t. I’ll admit it. I did indeed shit on your floor. But only over there in a corner where it was out of the way.’

‘Disgusting.’

‘Would you have me risk my health using a water closet where the germs are high jumping up at you off the
porcelain
. Don’t be so unhygienic.’

‘Will someone please punch him.’

‘Madam I am at most times a pacifist but if any man posing as a woman here so much as twitches his prick at me the city corporation will want to know upon what authority demolition of the present premises was carried out.’

‘I will not stand for more of your barbarous indecorums.’

‘I am madam, to be sure uncombed unlicked untamed unpolished and uncouth but how dare you. How dare you bespeak of me as indecorous when I haven’t yet gathered me flesh together for a memorable pose upon a pedestal in the proper posture of saint and scholar. Both of whom no matter how much their piety and erudition had to move their bowels over the centuries.’

‘You bowel moved and made a sandwich of it. And put it in our picnic lunch.’

‘Madam I am wounded.’

‘And one of my dearest friends fainted unwrapping it.’

‘I am scourged. Cringe do I now before you on my knees. I deny it. The acccusation is an outright slap in the face of my rarest principles. Your fucking la de da dearest friend as a matter of fact objected to me taking an early morning shit out on the lawn with the bunch of you watching from the terrace like you had a winner in the last furlong.’

‘You so much as admit it.’

‘Admit. Nonsense. I deny it. And will report you and Lady Macfugger to the society of coprophagers.’

‘Get out of my flat. This instant.’

‘Not this instant. Not in any bleeding instant as yet
unrecorded.
Not till I’ve had me humpful bumfull.’

‘Please someone punch him for me. He shat in my
hostess’s
sandwich. Buttered it and put it in our picnic basket. Punch him.’

‘Madam I stand here. Stark naked before you with the belt across me navel for the sake of decency. I would wish harm to no man. Nor lady. But where a bowel must move in the cause of justice I have moved it. I was apprenticed to the cobbling trade. Anyone of you here take off a shoe and I’ll give you a sole. I crap in the tradition of my ancestors
unenfeebled
by the pipe and water cistern.’

Veronica holding hands up to her face. The black belted figure grabbing the man of the embarrassed pink cheeks and shaking him by the clavicles.

‘And what do you think you’re staring at. I’ll corrugate your map till it would trip a goat, you cunt faced parrot.’

A figure emerging heavy shouldered into the fray.
Stepping
between the two naked men and letting loose with a right and left hook that spun the belted figure around once in each direction to fold in a heap on the floor. Hands gathering him up. Flinging him through the door and down the stairs. In a contortion of flapping limbs. Voices
descending.
As the body was dumped out the granite porched
entrance
. And I tip toed through a dark bedroom to peer out into the street. Where the white figure lay in the gutter struggling up, a shoe in each hand. Bending unsteadily to push them on the feet. To stand peeing. One hand shaking
a raised fist up at the windows, the other squeezing off a few last drops. With a few words of defiance.