High John the Conqueror, page 32
‘You anticipating the arrival of more trouble?’
‘Not that lot…’ I point at two young men in their underwear, potential mispers who have narrowly avoided their date with High John, or yet to partake of the herb, bolting up the main staircase.
‘That was right out of the John Rambo playbook back there. I knew you had it in you… still…’
‘You saw the odds.’
I catch my foot against something sharp and nearly slip. ‘Fuck… there’s shit on the floor, careful…’
‘What is it?’
‘A beak I think.’
‘Beak?’
‘They’re stuffed birds. Somebody has smashed the cases and played football with the lot…’
‘I’m glad that one was dead before that happened to it.’
Tamla nudges a tawny owl out of the way, with a small dildo stuck out of the back of its head, and I step over the torn remnants of a murder of crows. There are shards of broken records and crumpled inlay sleeves mixed in with the avian debris. The giant hi-fi has been dragged into the hall and toppled, along with the floor-standing speakers, which lie in pieces like a broken roadblock.
‘It must have been quite a party.’
‘I don’t like it; it’s got that last-days-of-Ancient-Rome vibe.’
‘Come again?’
‘The slave owners get drunk, shag their charges, and then slash their own wrists in the communal baths.’
‘Point.’
‘Ahhh! That smell.’
Although the gate-like entrances at both the front and back of the building are agape, ushering in a wintery chill, the reek along the connecting corridors is as foul as what we have come to expect from High John the Conqueror. The usual blend of putrefaction acquiring a new onus, nearer to whatever kind of rich stench plants produce when they make love than to the sweet and meaty aroma of yore. If anything, this is worse than the former pungency, the stench so noxious as to be very nearly edible.
‘Yeah, it’s been here alright. I’d say they’ve had a High John party, and haven’t spared the horses.’
‘It stinks like they’ve used it to supplement the garlic in the cooking. It’s coming off everything.’
‘Let’s pick up the pace, I can’t take any more of this without hurling…’
Tamla does not move, her twitching nose mouse-like in the presence of danger.
‘What is it?’
‘This’ll sound mad.’
‘Go on.’
‘It feels like the stink can see me somehow… there’s a mood in it… I can sort of see it myself, like this stinking thing has a face…’
‘Stop breathing, Tamla,’ I warn her. ‘The fumes are probably toxic. That’s why. Strong enough to work on us without our even needing to ingest any of the shit. Ignore everything you think of, and try and hold your breath until we’re outside. Come on, quickly.’
I struggle with my own advice. These corridors resemble the pointless places I visit in my dreams, their true character tunnels which invisible assailants stalk me through, endlessly and without interruption, until I forget who is chasing who and we start all over again. Words are as dangerous as people now, and I do not stop or speak until I have reached the threshold of the garden and allowed Tamla to catch up, realising that I have sprinted the remaining distance.
‘Sorry. I’m anxious about her. I am so anxious about her.’ It would be better for me not to think of Eileen until I can actually see her — my hope that her value to them might at least be half as great as hers is to me.
‘I’m sorry, Terry. But I can’t move any faster in these things,’ Tamla pants. ‘They still rub.’ Her box-fresh chestnut Dr. Martens are covered in droplets of melting ice, having crossed the dividing point where Sebastopol House’s stone floor gives way to rye grass, snowdrops and coltsfoot.
‘Jesus…’
‘I know.’
‘I’d do nothing here, just look out all the time… you couldn’t get used to it, could you?’
‘You can get used to anything…’ I begin. ‘No, you’re right. It’s too much.’
Before us is a bifurcated view of breath-taking splendour. Our appreciation neither adds to or completes its achievement: mankind’s total dominance over nature, a victory that does not so much improve on whatever God left there as dispel the thought that anything existed at all, before Masters’ landscapers got to work. As with all of Masters’ accruements, we are invited to react as sun-worshipers, our rapture alienating us from the grandeur, so as to establish the proper power relationship between the guest and owner.
To our left lies Wiltshire: here we take in a scene of sculptured sparsity; pruned copses, a quartet of diametrically squared lakes, attendant grottos, a smattering of giant oaks, mock rolling dales, shady avenues, elegiac glades, fauns, centaurs, a Temple of Apollo on an artificially piled mound, and statuettes of nymphs, fairies and giant toads, so hopelessly mismatched that they destroy the idea of criteria itself, stretching out upon hundreds of acres of silence. To our right, by way of contrast, is Hampshire, and no view at all. Instead there stands a signposted entrance that reads ‘The Folly’, marking an imposing high-hedged maze, no more than a few feet away from the back doors, its stout walls an entwined and impassable tangle of yew, boxwood, holly and hornbeam. This is too tall to peer over, preventing us from seeing beyond the formidable frontline of the cultivated entanglement, blocking any sense of perspective going forward.
‘Do you hear that?’
‘I think so… yes,’ she says.
From deep within the leafy construction, there are faint notes of music, which with small clouds of smoke, are drifting over the bottle-green labyrinth and harmonising together in the hazy mist.
‘It’s Minotaur time, isn’t it, Terry? This is a crap game for the visiting team.’
‘We’ve got no choice. They got here first.’
‘There’s two separate paths right from the off. What do we do, stick together or spilt?’
‘You serious about splitting? Or just pretending to be brave?’
Tamla curls her bottom lip in a sarcastic imitation of a chastened toddler.
‘I thought not. Together’s the only advantage we have. And of course — you have the gun.’
Tamla kisses the barrel, and bending down onto a knee, tracker style, runs her hand over the grass. ‘The path going out that way, it looks more used to me. Do you see?’
‘There’s scraping and marks all over the ground where it forks off. People have been shifting gear along here.’
‘Yeah, recently. I say we just follow the marks and ignore the other turns. It’s all too fresh to hide… maybe this isn’t going to turn into the test he’s hoping for.’
‘I don’t think he means this to be a test, only to look like one.’
‘You still think he wants us to find him?’
‘I do. The rest of this is enough of a challenge to throw off our hardworking colleagues if they had got here instead of us. But you and me? He expects us to clear the hurdles. That’s what he wants.’
‘Careful, Terry. You don’t want to go thinking that you and him have a special relationship or, God forbid, respect each other’s abilities — that way the path of true delusion lies.’
‘It’s not like that. I’m not saying he sees me as his great foil, Holmes to his Moriarty, pitting my wits against…’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Okay, maybe I am a bit. He’s a lonely weirdo, on the lookout for random soulmates he senses a connection with. Even one like me.’
‘No offence, but he must be fucking desperate to pick you.’
‘That’s the point. I present a kind of challenge or threat to him… which is the exciting part for Masters, how he gets his libidinal bang,’ I suggest.
‘Shhh…’ Tamla cups her ear. ‘There. We’re getting closer, aren’t we? You hear that? Sounds like someone is drowning the most unusual cat in the village.’
The music is growing clearer, an odd and discordant collection of noises, nearer animal communication, meowing, cawing and mooing, than humans performing for one another with a view to beguile or entertain. The path has also ceased to split rhizomatically and abruptly turns a corner, joining an avenue that leads straight across to a small portal gateway cut into the hedge.
‘This is the way; step inside.’
‘After you. He’ll be disappointed if he sees me first.’
We break into a clumsy jog, unable to stop ourselves, the equivalent of tearing through a report simply to get to the end, wanting to know what happens last and not next, careless in our haste and urgency. We do not notice the silhouette follow us through the gap and into a centre circle: The Enforcer — clad in the fitted special-forces fatigues he wore on his television contests in the jungle, his Excalibur TwinStrike crossbow pointed at our backs.
‘Oh shit. What is this?’
‘I don’t know…’
The pantomime in progress is enough to floor any hope of a tidy or simple resolution to this puzzle. With whatever is the opposite of synchronicity, events conforming to my foe’s will and not my own, the first person I lay eyes on is the author of the dark charade, and not the woman I have rushed headlong into danger to ‘rescue’.
‘Believe your eyes, Terry. I see him too.’
Masters is dressed as a Roman centurion, replete in a bronze breastplate, leg armour and hobnailed caligae sandals, his Praetorian helmet weighed down ridiculously by a taxidermied trumpeter swan strapped to the plume. Beside him, two seniors I recognise as ageing disc jockeys are clad similarly, gladius swords resting ominously in their scabbards. Both are swaying incense thuribles, alternatively singing incantations and chanting, a stork tied to the head of one, floppy and loose, evidently a fresh kill, and a bolt-upright bustard glued to the other’s crest, the weight of the bird forcing him to crook his neck dementedly. Although some ritual is evidently underway, there is a rushed and improvised feel to proceedings — a pile of shiny tracksuits lying in an untidy heap by a restaurant trolley laden with bronze bowls and goblets.
‘Please tell me this is a wind up…’ whispers Tamla.
‘No, it’s something worse than that. It is real.’
The three classicists are far from the only eccentrically clad actors visible to us, and possibly not even the pick of the crop. ‘My, oh my. All our Halloweens have come at once… I feel like I’ve stepped in dogshit,’ mutters Tamla. ‘I’m spoilt for choice. Where do I point the gun?’
‘I’d need weeks to work that one out.’
‘What the actual fuck are they doing over there?’
Overseeing ceremonies at the centre of a small stone circle — a collection of misshapen rocks and menhirs that could be taken for a Pagan temple, at a stretch — Masters points heavenwards and shouts something in a dead language, provoking a subdued cheer from his audience. Some of the flanker stones have been laid on their side and are serving as benches, which a few shivering masked individuals have gathered on. These are mispers, huddled together unenthusiastically with only swimwear, panties and loincloths for warmth; their faces hidden by surgical masks, executioner’s hoods and bandages, turquoise ink covering their exposed limbs. Whether they have been held here for weeks or gathered in an overnight swoop is unclear, but any initiative or resistance seems to have absented itself from their pusillanimous mood and passive demeanour. One of them could be Iggy, the boy who inspired this great search, or none of them could be. If any of us are still here in an hour, I might ask.
‘Look, over there,’ says Tamla.
At the centre of the megalithic ring is what I presume to be a sacrificial stone: a thin totemic plinth painted in green and purple stripes — the same eyes and tongue that I saw in the painting in Masters’ ballroom, leering over the pattern. Resting on the stone, which leans at a slight tilt, is a naked woman, tightly wrapped from head to toe in blood-red muslin cloth, bound by weeds and gorse. She is absolutely still and at the very least drugged. Only the outline of her breasts and knees protrude against the covering, and I recognise them at once as Eileen’s. I am too frightened for her to feel any of my own fear now, the danger she is in rendering me calm and implacable.
‘I see her too,’ says Tamla, adding, ‘It may be too late.’
‘Don’t say that. Please.’
‘I know. Sorry, Terry. What about them?’
‘They’re probably harmless. Hopefully.’
Stood at the edge of the circle are a motley collection of near-pensionable musicians, of varying types and tendencies, swaying out of time to music that they barely appear aware of playing. A hairy, wild, ancient festival-fodder from the days of crust stares angrily at a coronet that his withered dreads keep getting in the way of, as the other part of the brass section, bank manager-like in a suit and bow tie, wrestles with his saxophone, slobbering haplessly over its mouthpiece. Neither they nor their bandmates seem excited to be here, or surprised to see us. Despite our gatecrashing proceedings, the small group grimly persevere with their diabolic improvisation, a triangle and harp clanging purposelessly, an electric bassist with a generator grinding out a few death-metal notes, and a lifeless bongo player, a beat or two behind the rest of the passionless cacophony, following from the rear. A few sport token efforts at fancy dress: bonnets, capes, a strap-on plague doctor beak, and a hockey mask, but also walking boots, Birkenstocks and Karrimor anoraks, which betray their sensible daily existences. The bassist misses a chord and, rubbing his ears, pulls up the battered hood of his monk’s habit. At which point the performance clicks, and I know who we are watching.
‘Acid Horse!’ I say to Tamla.
‘What?’
‘Acid Horse: Masters’ old band. They experimented with High John back in the day. He was their manager. I don’t know what they’re doing here, but that’s who they are.’
Conducting the orchestra of the half-willing with one hand, and also blowing rather half-heartedly into a flute, is Fallgrief, clothed ludicrously in puttees and a hooded Panama hat, carrying a Smith and Wesson weighted barrel, which he is using as a baton. Gamely, he issues shouts of encouragement at the melee, glancing nervously at us and grinning awkwardly, as if to suggest that none of this is really his idea — which it might not be. Towards the back of the circle, stroking the foot of a large statue that I presume is of High John, is our old friend Fluffy. ‘Sorry,’ she shouts defensively, ‘I had no choice. I needed to meet him again! I love him more than you. I love him more than anyone!’
High John, if that is who we are facing, is a dishevelled specimen of monsterhood: an arts and crafts yeti built out of bark, with a bracken mohican, conkers for eyes, and cones and twigs hanging off his chest like a neglected outdoor toy at a garden centre. I am sure that in motion, dosed up to the eyeballs, the effect of his advance would be menacing, but stood here in his own version of the Burning Man festival, the effigy displays a tackiness I associate with all religions: their plastic saints, garish stained windows and many-limbed deities — concepts better imagined than observed.
‘W-h-a-t a joke.’
‘Careful, he might hear you…’
‘I don’t care if the muppet does.’
For the first time since last night, I smile; yet whether it is the wind moving his eyes, or my exhaustion taking pictures of my unconscious and projecting them outwards, I see High John watch me and take my measure. And I know something then of what it is for this mossy incubus to be the last thing a true believer sees in life.
‘All of you…’ I try to shout, but my voice is hoarse and strained, barely carrying over the din, and Tamla looks at me to signify that if I have no chance, nor will she. Our effort to interrupt proceedings has had one effect on the audience, though. Another attendant has decided we have come far enough. Approaching us in plus-fours and the smock of a New Forest snake catcher, as indignantly as if we had sabotaged a carefully prepared shoot, is Masters’ gamekeeper, foaming at the mouth and carrying a large net that he appears to view us as the right fit for.
‘You better not be scaring no pheasants!’ he yells. ‘Better not have no dogs with you neither!’
‘I’ve had enough of this…’ says Tamla.
‘Try and give him the benefit of the doubt.’
‘I know you gypsies! Better not be scaring no birds with those dogs!’
‘Can’t afford to give him a chance, Terry.’
Tamla’s shot hits him in the groin, the buckshot spreading randomly, as she is no longer taking careful aim. The man squirms as if impaled on the cathedral spire, his thrashing legs and the net brought together in a flailing human web, worthy of a gladiator’s final moments in the Colosseum. That stops the music. Slowly, Masters ceases to swoosh his arms in giant figures of eight and allows them to fall anticlimactically to his sides. With impatient scorn, he surveys us, and seemingly deep from within a haze of pain, cries, ‘You arrive at last! Yet persist in defiling what is holy, and treating us, his children’ — he points to the sod-work sculpture of High John, which at least is no longer staring into my soul — ‘as outcasts! Who, like women of the night, are liable to vanish before they expire!’
‘Jesus, Terry. I’ll never accuse you of exaggeration again.’
‘This is nothing.’
I scan the crowd, and in spite of the numbers present, and array of dangerous weapons assembled, there is a susceptibility to extinction about those present. No one appears ready to join the gamekeeper for a spot of instant martyrdom. Summoning my voice, so as to be heard above the injured man’s cries, I yell, ‘Let’s start by letting anyone who wants to leave, leave.’
Masters lifts his head heavenwards in search of divine confirmation of our imbecility.
‘You understand nothing,’ he snorts loudly. ‘You are a natural conservative, Inspector, with rebellious tendencies. I offer you the chance to become a true revolutionary, to embrace the only reconfiguration that counts!’
Tamla lifts the gun straight at him. ‘A lot of people have been hurt already. Don’t let any more be.’
‘Or face more violence at your hands, Agent Starling? Is that your answer to everything, you police? To maim, belittle, harm and destroy? What indelicate creatures you are. Small wonder you have as little reason to remain in the world as I have!’
