Darkmans (10 page)

But not here

Kane rubbed his face with his hands (he was finding the Kurd rather exhausting). ‘Would you get me some water?’ He mimed turning on a tap, holding a glass under.

Gaffar did as he was asked. He was accustomed to following orders. There was a kind of dignity in submission which the quiet ox inside of him took an almost active pleasure in.

‘Thanks.’

As Kane drank he assessed Gaffar’s suit.

‘Nice suit…’ He exhaled sharply as he spoke, then burped and wiped his mouth with his hand.

Gaffar nodded.

‘Where’s it from?’

‘Beede.’

Kane blinked. ‘No way.’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ Kane reiterated firmly. ‘Beede would never own a suit like that. It looks foreign, for starters, and he religiously supports the British Wool Trade…’

Gaffar scowled. ‘
He
give to me.
Beede.
In exchange for his losses,
yeah?’

‘What is it?’ Kane casually flipped open one of the front jacket flaps (feeling the seductive, semi-hollow crackle of his Marlboro packet through the lining). Gaffar immediately slapped it shut.

‘Yves Saint Laurent,’ he announced, haughtily.

‘Not a chance, man,’ Kane snorted. ‘It’s
gotta
be knock-off.’

Gaffar (rising like a pike to the bait) shrugged the jacket from his shoulders and showed Kane the label.

‘
Wow.
’ Kane perused the label at his leisure (it looked legitimate), while casually slipping his free hand into the pocket and removing his cigarettes. ‘So there you go, huh?’

‘So there you go,’ Gaffar echoed, scowling, as Kane tapped out a smoke and flipped it into his mouth.

He pulled the jacket back on (wincing slightly as it snagged on his neatly re-bandaged arm). Kane relaxed down into the sofa again (
matches? Lighter?
), his expression one of tolerant bemusement. As he leaned he felt something crumple behind him. He shoved his hand under the blanket and withdrew a large, slightly dented brown envelope. He stared at it for a while, frowning.

Gaffar, meanwhile, had returned to the kitchen and was dishing himself up a large bowlful of beans. In the bread-bin he’d located a half-used wholemeal loaf from which he’d already torn a sizeable portion. He balanced the bread on top of the beans and carried the bowl over to Beede’s desk, placing it down, carefully, on to the battered, leather veneer and taking off his jacket (hanging it over the back of the adjacent chair).

He sat down and began to eat, employing the bread as a makeshift scoop. Several mouthfuls in, he noticed a large World Atlas on a bookshelf close by, hauled it out, one-handed, opened it, and began casually paging through the maps.

Kane watched Gaffar for a while, patting away – like a zombie – at his pockets (impressed by the Kurd’s apparent ability to make himself feel at home). The suit (Kane wryly observed) gave Gaffar the furtive
air of a man struggling to pass himself off as Minister of Sport – or Information, or the Arts – in a tin-pot military dictatorship (somewhere much too hot) after his brother, Sergio (the ambitious, pissed-up lieutenant), had shot the bastard general and promptly stepped into his highly polished, size eleven lace-ups –

Ah yes
 –

The whole tragic socio-political edifice was currently hanging – like a badly mounted stuffed elk – on Gaffar’s family resemblance, terror, and the faultless cut of his Yves Saint Laurent.

Sergio?

Man
 –

What am I on?!

He finally located a box of matches (tucked down the side of the sofa), lit his cigarette and returned his full attention back to the brown envelope. He inspected the seal –

Not glued, just
 –

He kept his smoke dangling loosely from his lip as he popped out the flap. He peered inside – inhaled – and saw a thickish sheath of photocopied papers. He exhaled –

Hmmn

– and gently removed them.

It was a very old book – forty pages long – badly reproduced and slightly blurry (although the frontispiece was in bolder type and so marginally more legible than the rest). It was written in Old English –

Well, old-ish…

Some (but not all) of the ‘s’s were ‘f’s.

SCOGIN’S JESTS;

he read:

Full of witty Mirth and pleafant Shifts;

done by him in FRANCE

and other places.

BEING

A Prefervative against Melancholy.

Then underneath that:

Gathered by Andrew Board, Doctor of Phyfick.

This was followed by a whole ream of publishing guff.

Kane casually opened to the first page. He stiffened. On the blank, inner leaf, in pencil, somebody had written: –

So Beede –

There’s a whole series of these things (one for each of the various monarchs’ funny-men, although I didn’t get a chance to look at any of the others). Apparently there was quite a vogue for them in the 1600s (and for several hundred years after that – I saw at least two editions of this one – the earlier called
Scoggin’s Jests
by an Andrew Boord – 1626 – and this one, in which the spelling’s more familiar, from 1796 – that’s a 170-year gap!), indicating how popular these guys actually were (plus: note the celebrity publisher…)

Kane returned to the front page again: –

Printed for W. Thackeray at the Angel in Duck Lane, near Weft-Smithfield, and J. Deason at the Angel in Gilt-Spur-Street.

He stared at this, blankly, for a while, removing his cigarette from his mouth (looking around for an ashtray, but not finding one, so tapping off the ash on to the knee of his jeans and patting it into the fabric), then turned back to the inside leaf and picked up where he’d left off: –

The information enclosed isn’t considered especially reliable, though. This book was written years after John Scogin’s death. Much of it will be based on either legend or hearsay (would’ve been considered ‘tabloid’, even at the time of its publication).

The actual story of his life (and a critique of Andrew Board, this book’s compiler, who seems like a rather dodgy character – ‘physician to Henry VIII’,
apparently) features in R.H. Hill’s Tales of the Jesters,
1934 (and I wouldn’t have a clue what his sources were), but – believe it or not – the text was registered unavailable (read as ‘some miserable bastard stole it’).

The librarian in the Antiquarian Books Section (who was actually quite chatty) sent me to go and see some journalist called Tom Benson who happened to be in the library on that day and in possession of an associated text called
A Nest of Ninnies
by Robert Armin (He’s writing a book about comedy and is very interested in jesters’, she said).

I tracked him down to the Music Section. He was a little hostile at first (you know how territorial these people can be), but after a brief conversation he admitted that he actually had his very own copy of
Tales of the Jesters
at home which he’d ‘found’ in a second-hand bookshop in Rye (this might’ve just been sheer bravura on his part – that whole ‘journalists v academics’ hornets’ nest. Or maybe not).

The last section (in brackets) had been hurriedly crossed out.

Anyhow
,

Kane continued reading:

I asked if I might borrow it some time (or even just make a copy of the relevant chapters) but he got a little prickly at this point and said he was still in the middle of using it, but that he would definitely call me when he was done ( I gave him my number, although I won’t be holding my breath). Then he told me some stuff over coffee (I bought the Madeira cake – it was a little dry) which you might find interesting. Will inform you in person.

The quality of the copy is poor (at best). This is because it was reproduced from a microfile. But I think you’ll get the basic gist…

W.

PS If you need anything else – anything at all – you know you can always reach me on my mobile…

A number followed.

Kane cocked his head for a while – as if deep in thought – his eye
returning, repeatedly, to the phrase ‘I bought the Madeira cake – it was a little dry,’ and then to the signature (‘W’).

Eventually – but somewhat hesitantly – he moved on to the text, proper. ‘W’ was right: the quality of the copy was very poor. And it was written in an ornate typescript (real migraine territory), which made the letters look like so many black ants dancing a woozy conga. After several minutes he succeeded in battling his way through The Prologue (his eye lingering, for a while, on a small rhyme at the bottom of the page): –

I Have heard fay that Scogin did come of an honeft ftock, no kindred, and his friends did fet him to fchool at Oxford, where he did continue until the time he was made Mafter of Art,

where he made this jeft,

A Master of Art is not worth a fart, Except he be in Schools,

A Batchelour of Law, is not worth a Straw, Except he be among fools.

Kane’s brows rose slightly. He closed the manuscript and reopened the envelope. He peered inside, then smiled and shoved in his hand, pulling out another (smaller) sheet of paper which he hadn’t noticed there before. This was a receipt from The British Library, and detailed the costs of the photocopying. At the bottom of the receipt he observed – with a small start – the credit card details of one Winifred Shilling –

I knew it

The fucking Madeira cake –

Damn her

‘Why?’

Kane jerked out of his reverie. Gaffar had twisted around on his chair and was now staring at him, quizzically.

‘Sorry?’

Kane hurriedly shoved the manuscript and the receipt back into the envelope, licking the seal this time and pressing it shut.

‘A look of thunder,’
Gaffar exclaimed, helpfully providing both vocal (and visual) dramatisation of his words.

‘
Oh…
’ Kane’s face rapidly showcased a disparate mish-mash of emotions (Picasso’s cubist masterpiece
Woman Crying
seemed like traditional portraiture by comparison). He struggled to get a handle on the play of his features. ‘It’s…uh…
nothing,
’ he almost ticked.

‘Okay.’ Gaffar nodded (registering Kane’s inner turmoil, but taking it all with a pinch of salt: I mean, how hard could life
be
for this spoiled, flabby, Western pup?).

‘I lost something,’ Kane muttered, suddenly pulling himself to his feet (his hair falling across his face), ‘that’s all.’ He glanced around him (through the lank mop of his fringe), not entirely certain what he was searching for –

Beede?

‘Is lid?’ Gaffar asked patiently, a small chipolata suspended delicately between his mouth and his bowl.

‘Pardon?’

‘Lid?’ Gaffar indicated towards the Tupperware beaker on Beede’s reading table.

‘
Lid?
’ Kane stared at the beaker, frowning.

‘Ah, fuck it…
English,
’ Gaffar murmured, turning back – resignedly – to his meal.

Kane placed the brown envelope onto Beede’s reading table (next to the contentious item of Tupperware), carefully balanced his cigarette there – its smouldering tip suspended over the carpet – and then kneeled down to inspect his pile of books. If there was one thing he could be certain of: Beede’s books would speak (a-hem)
volumes…

On top of the pile (and it was a large pile) was what Kane – smilingly – took to be a real ‘Beede classic’: Derek Johnson’s
Essex Curiosities
; Hardback. 1973. He picked it up and opened to the front flap –

Ah yes

‘A representative collection of the old, curious and interesting objects that abound in Essex…for all those who cherish the heritage of the past and wish to preserve it for the future.’

Lovely

Kane put the book aside, with a grin.

Next up –

Ha!

Victor Papanek’s
Design for the Real World.

Brilliant!

Inside flap:

Ta-dah!

‘A startling and constructive blueprint for human survival by a professional designer who accuses the Industrial design “establishment” of mass negligence.’

(Oh God. The word ‘establishment’ stuck into those two, accusing little inverted commas…How right! How po-faced! How deliciously sanctimonious! How typically fucking
Beede.
) Kane sniggered, furtively, then laid the volume down, almost fondly, turning – for a brief moment – to take a quick puff on his cigarette –

Okay, okay…

He deftly returned his cigarette to its former position –

Soooo…

Third in the pile, a very new-looking paperback called –

What?!

The Yoga of Breath: A Step-by-step Guide to Pranayama
by Richard Rosen.

No

Kane picked up the book and stared at it, scowling (as if the mere force of his disapproval – and incomprehension – might make
it disappear. But it didn’t. It remained a steady weight in his hand; a neat 3
lb
tome of ridiculously incongruous NewAge hokum).

He slowly shook his head as he flipped it over and speed-read the sales pitch –

Blah blah…life energy…

Blah blah…self-transformation

Blah blah…breath and body awareness

Nuh-uh!

Beede
? Reading a book about
yoga
? It made absolutely no sense (this strangely fashioned block simply wouldn’t fit inside the box of traditional shapes Kane had painstakingly carved out for his father). He cast the book aside, hissing under his breath. It was a red herring. A
blip.
Some ditsy woman at work had loaned it to him – or that
damn
chiropodist with her stupid verrucas –

Hysterical?

Yeah

Ha bloody ha

The next book in the pile was larger and more traditional. Kane grabbed it –

Oh yes…

That was better: a thick, smart paperback (with illustrations) called
A History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World.
He opened it, randomly, to a black and white reproduction of a small painting of a hairy youth (naked) from the fifteenth century, under which was written: ‘The bear showed great affection for the child and suckled it for an entire year. Because of this feeding the child became as hairy as a wild beast and ate raw meat:
Valentin et Orson.
’