The Revolt of Aphrodite (7 page)

The Cham pushed and pulled him about as one might a pet. I was introduced and shook a damp octopoid hand; bizarre was Sipple, and rather disturbing. “I was telling the boy here” said Caradoc “about why you had to leave the motherland.” Sipple shot me a doubtful and cunning look, unable to decide for a moment whether or not to pick up this gambit, an obvious comedian’s “feed”. His eyes were far too close together; “made to see through keyholes” a Greek would have said. Then he decided to comply. “It was all Mrs. Sipple’s fault, sir” he whimpered with just the suspicion of a
trembling
underlip. “Yes” he went on slyly, moistening his lips and gazing sideways at me with a furtive and timorous air. “She didn’t hold with my exhibitions. We had to part.”

Caradoc, who appeared to hang on his lips, struck his knee with massive sympathy. “Wives never do. To the ducking stool with them all” he cried in jovian fashion. Sipple nodded and brooded further on his wrongs.

“It was the lodger” Sipple explained to me in a painstaking
undertone
. “I can only do it in exceptional circumstances, and then it all goes off in spray.” He looked woebegone, his underlip swelled with self-commiseration. Yet his ferret’s eye still watched me, trying to size me up. I could see it was a relief when I decided to find him
funny, and laughed—more out of obedience to Caradoc than from my own personal inclination. However he took courage and launched himself into his act—a recital obviously much-rehearsed and
canonised
by repetition. Caradoc added rhetorical flourishes of his own, obviously keenly appreciative of his friend’s gifts. “You were right” he cried. “Right to leave her, Sippy, with dignity intact. Everything you tell me about her fills me with dismay. God’s ruins! Covered in clumps of toc. Ah God to see her haunches stir across the moon at Grantchester. No, you were right, dead right. A woman who refuses to tie up a Sipple and thrash him with leg-irons is not worth the name.”

Sipple gave the stonehenge of a smile exposing huge discoloured teeth with some extensive gaps. “It wouldn’t fadge, Carry” he admitted. “But here in Athens you can do as you would be done by, as the scripture has it.” I suppose you could call it extra-suspensory perception.

“Tell me again” said the Cham eager for further felicities of this kind, and the little pear droned on. “It came over me very gradual” said Sipple, raising his arms to pat the air. “Very gradual indeed it did. At first I was normal as any curate, ask my mates. Give me an inch and I took a mile. And I was never one for the boys, Carry, not then I wasn’t. But suddenly the theatrical side in me came to the fore. I was like a late-blooming flahr, Carry, a retarded flowering. Perhaps it was being a clown that did it, the magic of the footlights, I dunno.”

It was funny all right, but also vaguely disquieting. He put his head on one side and winked with his right eye. He stood up and joined his fingers to say, with a seraphic sadness: “One day I had to face reality. It was quite unexpected. I pulled out me squiffer when all of a sudden it abrogated by a simple reticulation of the tickler. I was aghast! I went to see the doctor and he says to me: ‘Look here Sipple, I must be frank with you. As man to man your sperm count is low and the motility of your product
nil.
’
I reeled. There I had been, so young, so gay, so misinformed. ‘Sipple’ went on the doc ‘it’s all in your childhood. I bet you never noozled the nipple
properly
. You never had seconds I’ll avow.’ And he was right; but then what little nipper knows how to tease the tit properly and avoid
abrogation in later life when he needs all the reticulation he can get, just tell me that?” He wiped away an invisible tear and stood all comico-pathetico before an invisible medico. “You have all my sympathy” said Caradoc, drunk and indeed a little moved. He swallowed heavily. Sipple went on, his voice rising to higher more plaintive register: “But that was not all, Carry. The doctor had drained away my self-confidence with his blasted medical diagmatic. Yet there was a crueller blow to come, ‘Sipple’ he said to me ‘there is no way out of your dilemma. You are utterly lacking in
PELVIC
THRUST
.’”

“How unfair” cried Caradoc with burning sympathy.

“And thank God untrue” squawked Sipple. “Under the proper stage management it is a wanton lie.”

“Good.”

“I have shown you haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll show you again tonight. Where is Henniker?”

“I’ll take your word for it, Sippy.”

Sipple poured himself out a massive drink and warmed to his tale, secure now in his hold over his audience. He must have been a very great clown once, for he combined the farcical and the sinister within one range of expression. “Some day I shall write the story of my
love-life
from my own point of view. Starting with the dawn of realisation. One day the scales dropped from my eyes. I saw love as only a clown could: what struck me was this: the
position,
first of all, is
ridiculous.
No-one with a sense of the absurd could look at it frankly without wanting to laugh. Who invented it? If you had seen Mrs. Arthur Sipple lying there, all reliability, and fingering her ringlets
impatiently
, you’d have felt your risibility rise I bet. It was too much for me, I couldn’t master myself, I laughed in her face. Well, not exactly her face. She was too heavy to turn over, you’d need a spade. It was only when her night-dress took fire that she realised that all was over. I couldn’t help laughing, and that made her cry. ‘Farewell forever Beatrice’ I said turning on my heel. I sailed away and for many a month I wallowed in the dark night of the soul. I reflected. Gradually my ideas clarified, became more theatrical. I had found a way through.

“So I went back to the doctor, all fulfilment, to tell him about my new methods. He jumped and said I was a caution. A caution! ‘It’s very very unBritish, you know’ he said. I hadn’t thought of that. I thought he’d be so pleased with me. He said I was a traitor to the
unborn
race. He said he wanted to write a paper on me, me Sipple. I grew a trifle preremptory with him, I’ll allow. But I hadn’t come all the way back to Cockfosters to be insulted. He called me an anomaly and it was the last straw. I struck him and broke his spectacles.” Sipple gave a brief sketch of this blow and sank back on to the sofa. “And so” he went on slowly “I came here to Athens to try and find peace of mind; and I won’t say I didn’t. I’m assuaged now, thanks to Mrs. Henniker’s girls and their broomsticks. No more abrogation of the tickler.”

Caradoc was having one of his brief attacks of buoyancy; drink seemed to have a curious intermittent effect upon him, making him tipsy in little patches. But these were passing clouds of fancy merely from which he appeared to be able to recover by an act of will. “Once,” he was saying dreamily “once the firm sent me to build a king a palace in Burma and there I found the menfolk had little bells sewn into their season tickets—believe me bells. Every movement accompanied by a soft and silver tinkle. Suggestive, melodious and poetical it was to hear them chiming along the dark jungle roads. I almost went out and ordered a carillon for myself….

But nothing came of it. I was withdrawn too soon.”

A large scale diversionary activity was now taking place somewhere among the curtains; Pulley appeared looking sheepish and
incoherent
, followed by Mrs. Henniker who was greeted with a cry from Sipple. “What about it, Mrs. H?” he cried. “I told you I wanted to be tortured tonight in front of my friends here.” Mrs. Henniker clucked and responded imperturbably that there had been a little delay, but that the “torture-room” was being prepared and the girls dressed up. The clown then excused himself with aplomb, saying that he had to get ready for his act but that he would not be long.
“Don’t let him fall asleep” he added pointing to the yawning Pulley. “I need an audience or it falls flat.”

Nor did it take very long to set the theatrical scene. Mrs. Henniker reappeared with clasped hands and bade us follow her once more down into the same gaunt kitchen where the shadows still bobbed and slithered—but a different set of them; moreover the dungeon now was full of the melancholy clanking of chains. More lights had been introduced—and there in the middle of things was Sipple naked. They had just finished chaining him to a truckle bed of medieval ugliness. He paid no attention to anyone. He appeared deeply preoccupied. He was wearing the awkward oldfashioned
leg-irons
of the cripple. But most bizarre of all were the party whips, so to speak. The three girls who had been delegated to “torture” him wore mortar-boards and university gowns with dingy fur tippets. The contrast with their baggy Turkish trousers was delightful. They each held a long broom switch—the sort one could buy for a few drachmae and which tavern keepers use for sweeping out the
mud-floored
taverns. As we entered they all advanced purposefully upon Sipple with their weapons at the ready while he, appearing to catch sight of them for the first time, gave a start and sank kneeling to the floor.

He began to tremble and sweat, his eyeballs hung out as he gazed around him for some method of escape. He shrank back with dismal clankings. I had to remind myself that he was acting—but indeed
was
he acting? It was impossible to say how true or false this traumatic behaviour was. Mrs. Henniker folded her arms and looked on with a proud smile. The three doctors of divinity now proclaimed in very broken English, “Arthur, you have been naughty again. You must be punish!” Sipple cringed. “Nao!” he cried in anguish. “Don’t ’urt me. I swear I never.”

The girls, too, acted their parts very well, frowning, knitting black brows, gritting white teeth. Their English was full of charm—such broken crockery, and so various as to accent—craggy Cretan, singsong Ionian. “Confess” they cried, and Sipple began to sob. “Forward!” said Mrs. Henniker now, under her breath in Greek, adding the
further
adornment of a thick Russian intonation. “Forward my
children
, my partridges.”

They bowed implacably over Sipple now and shouted in ragged unison, “You have again wetted your bed.” And before he could protest any further they fell upon him roundly with their broom switches and began to fustigate the fool unmercifully crying “Dirty. Dirty.”

“Ah” cried Sipple at the stinging pleasure of the first assault. “Ah.” He writhed, twisted and pleaded to be sure; he even made a few desultory movements which suggested that he was going to fight back. But this was only to provoke a harsher attack. Anyway he would have stood little chance against this band of peasant Amazons. He clanked, scraped and squeaked. The noise grew somewhat loud, and Mrs. Henniker slipped into the corner to put on a disc of the Blue Danube in order to mitigate it. Bits of broom flew off in every direction. Caradoc watched this scene with the reflective gravity of one watching a bullfight. I felt astonishment mixed with misgiving. But meanwhile Sipple, oblivious to us all, was taking his medicine like a clown—nay, lapping it up.

He had sunk under the sharpened onslaught, begun to disintegrate, deliquesce. His pale arms and legs looked like those of a small octopus writhing in the throes of death. In between his cries and sobs for mercy his breath came faster and faster, he gasped and gulped with a perverted pleasure. At last he gave a final squeak and lay
spread-eagled
on the stone flags. They went on beating him until they saw no further sign of life and then, panting, desisted and burst into peals of hysterical laughter. The corpse of Sipple was unchained,
disentangled
and hoisted lovingly on to the truckle bed. “Well done” said Mrs. Henniker. “Now he will sleep.” Indeed Sipple had already fallen into a deep infantile slumber. He had his thumb in his mouth and sucked softly and rhythmically on it.

They surrounded his bed filled with a kind of commiserating admiration and wonder. On slept Sipple, oblivious. I noticed the markings on his arms and legs—no larger than blackheads in a greasy skin: but unmistakably the punctures of a syringe. The shadows swayed about us. One of the lamps had begun to smoke. And now, in the middle of everything, there came a sharp hammering on a door somewhere and Mrs. Henniker jumped as if stung by a wasp and dashed away down the corridor. Everyone waited in
tableau grouped about the truckle bed until she should reappear—which she did a moment later at full gallop crying: “Quick, the police.”

An indescribable confusion now reigned. In pure panic the girls scattered like rabbits to a gunshot. Windows were thrown open, doors unbolted, sleepers were warned to hurry up. The house
disgorged
its inhabitants in ragged fashion. I found myself running along the dunes with Pulley and Caradoc in the frail starshine. Our car had disappeared, though there seemed to be another on the road with only its dim sidelights on. Having put a good distance between ourselves and the house we lay in a ditch panting to await developments. Later the whole thing turned out to have been a
misunderstanding
; it was simply two sailors who had come to claim their recumbent friend. But now we felt like frightened schoolboys.
Concern
for the sleeping clown played some part in Caradoc’s
meditations
as we lay among the squills, listening to the sighing sea. Then the tension ebbed, and turning on his back the Cham’s thoughts changed direction. Presumably Hippolyta’s chauffeur had beaten a retreat in order not to compromise her reputation by any brush with the law. He would be back, of that my companions were sure. I chewed grass, yawning. Caradoc’s meditations turned upon other subjects, though only he and Pulley were
au
courant.
Out of this only vague sketches swam before me. Something about Hippolyta having ruined her life by a long-standing attachment, a lifelong infatuation with Graphos. “And what the devil can she think we will achieve by my giving a Sermon on the Mount on the blasted Acropolis?” Nobody cared what savants thought. Graphos might save the day, but his career was at its lowest ebb. He had had several nervous breakdowns and was virtually unable to lead his party even if the government fell, as they thought it would this winter. And all because he was going
deaf.