Darkmans (54 page)

He strolled into his bedroom to find his shoes and his jacket, was gone for several minutes and then returned, carrying an old pair of scuffed, brown Bludstones.

‘You should keep on watching this,’ he told Gaffar, indicating with the boots towards the tv, ‘the next bit’s fantastic. He cracks up. His mind starts to wander and the whole film turns into some crazy kind of
acid
trip…’

Gaffar stared at Kane, intently, as he spoke, an inexplicable smile playing around the corners of his lips.

‘In fact there’s a fine lump of hash in the old Gold Blend jar if you wanna make a night of it…’ Kane continued, slightly unnerved by Gaffar’s look. He pulled on his boots, with a grimace, then furtively rubbed at his nose (surreptitiously, while he was still bending over) in case something vile was hanging from it.

Gaffar’s darkly ironic gaze continued to follow him as he prepared to exit.

‘Great dinner,’ Kane yelled over his shoulder, as a parting shot. ‘
Fantastic
dinner. Cheers for that.’

Gaffar’s eyes narrowed slightly as Kane disappeared from view, then he turned and busily recommenced his meal, wondering – with an idle shrug – how long the small square of kitchen roll which was currently affixed to the back of his head might reasonably be expected to stay in situ.

She was hardly
overburdened
with stuff to occupy herself, and Gaffar (the horny, little runt) had gone to all the trouble of –

A-hem

–
borrowing
it for her, so she lounged back in her bed, propped up on her pillows, and she read it, at her leisure, from cover to cover.

It took ages (the lettering was all squiggly and the actal copy-quality was shite), but she read every damn
page
of it – every damn
word
(even the ones – and there were plenty of them – which she didn’t have the first clue what they meant – like ‘parbraked’ or ‘whiting’ or ‘apothecary’ or ‘tapster’ –

?!
).

And it was quite funny (actually) and stupid and
dirty
…all about con-tricks and wise-cracks and sex and bums and farts (especially farts); not the kind of stuff she could imagine
historical
people thinking about (or talking about or
doing
) – or
Beede
reading (or thinking about, or doing) either, for that matter.

There was this one story (for example) where Scogin (or Master John, or Master Scogin, or
John
Scogin – the geezer whose adventures the book was describing) played a prank on his college pals so he wasn’t obliged to go hungry during Lent…

Lent?

Kelly called over a passing nurse and asked her if she knew what Lent was, and the nurse explained how she wasn’t entirely sure but she thought it might be the few weeks between when Jesus died on the cross and when he rose again –

‘Oh
yeah
…Like in
Carrie
? At the end of the film? When that evil
fucker who threw pig’s blood at her is layin’ roses on her grave an’ then –
Pow!
– this hand breaks out thru the soil an’ grabs for his throat?’

‘Well…Yes.
Kind
of…Jesus pushed back this huge boulder which was blocking up the entrance to his tomb…’

‘So he was
mad
-strong, huh? Like a Power Ranger?’

‘Yes…Well…he obviously had supernatural gifts of a
sort
…’

‘An’ he was all covered in
bandages
, weren’t he? Like a mummy? I
remember
that from R.E. at school…’

‘Yes.
Yes.
Bandages or…or maybe
robes
…’

‘Wow.
Awesome.
An’
then
what?’

‘Uh…I’m not entirely sure. He
spoke
to a few people, I imagine, to prove that he’d risen again…’

‘Sprang out on ‘em? Really shat ‘em up? Big, meaty
nail
wounds still on his hands?’

‘Uh…Well maybe not
quite
so…’

‘Wow. An’ then they
still
went on an’ voted him God? Even after all his shady behaviour?’

‘Uh. Yes.
Yes.
I suppose they did.’

Pause

‘
Aw.
Check out your
face
! I’m jus’ rippin’ the
piss
, love.’

Anyhow, from what she could gauge, Lent was the time
in between
these two distinct phases (about six weeks or so, the nurse estimated) although the haughty old geezer in the bed opposite – who was
much
too good to mix with the other patients on the ward and spent all his days hidden behind drawn white curtains (Reverend Jacobs, they called him – because, Kelly supposed, he was totally Cream
Crackers
…

Geddit
?)

– interrupted the nurse at this point (through his drapes, no less) and told her (in no uncertain terms, either) that she didn’t know diddly-squat…‘Lent – you silly
goose
– starts on Ash Wednesday and commemorates the time when Jesus retreated into the desert and battled with his conscience for forty days and forty nights…’

Eh?!

‘An’ who the hell asked
you
, you interferin’ old Gobshite?’

More properly, Lent was a time when religious people, people who went to church (‘Yeah, yeah,
Catholics
and stuff’) liked to cut back on sweets and booze…

‘What? You mean like goin’ on a special
diet
for Christ?’

‘Exactly…’ the nurse nodded, glancing anxiously towards the drawn, white curtains.

‘Why?’

‘Well to prove their
faith
, I suppose…’

‘Beezer!’

‘And to show they have some understanding of Christ’s suffering, by suffering a little themselves…’

‘Brilliant!’

‘And then, when it’s all over – at Easter – they can eat as much as they like.’

‘
Yeah?
Chocolate eggs an’ shit?’

‘Yes.’

‘An’ Jesus is
cool
with that?’

‘Yes.
Yes.
I believe he is.’

Anyway
, Scogin wasn’t meant to eat too much (or get pissed) during Lent (this was in olden-times, so everything was inevitably much more:
you
know…
yawn
) and he didn’t have any spare money (any
wonga
– no
dosh
) to creep out of college and spend secretly at Nando’s (or down the boozer, or wherever), so he came up with a cunning plan to get free entry into the college pantry (where all the food was stored –
Duh
!).

He did this by pretending that his ‘Chamber Fellow’ (the nonce who shared his room, poor bugger) was ill. It was the time of The Black Plague, and because none of the other scholars wanted to catch what the poor Fellow had, they gave Scogin the keys to the kitchen so that he could prepare him his food while nobody else was about (to avoid cross-contamination an’ shit). Once Scogin had the keys, though, he just took what he liked (Lent be blowed, eh? He feasts like a king!).

After a few weeks, however, people started to get suspicious (‘Oi! Where the hell’s that lovely leg o’ lamb?!’) and they demanded to see the sick Fellow’s ‘water’ (his piss – they wanna test it), but instead of providing them with a sample, Scogin held a burning candle to the poor Fellow’s nose (an’ his
lips
, so they blister up) and the sight of his apparent ‘contagion’ was so terrifying to behold that the Masters
stopped harassing the conniving pair and allowed them to keep those precious keys for a few weeks longer.

Scogin and his Chamber Fellow consequently lived the Life of Reilly throughout all of Lent, eating what they liked, drinking and carousing, until Maundy Thursday when they enjoyed a huge, final blow-out at the college’s expense –

Eh?

‘Oi.
You.
Behind ya curtains. Old Smarty-pants. What’s Maundy Thursday when it’s at home?’

‘Maundy Thursday’ – his disembodied voice wafted through, ‘is the last Thursday before Easter Friday. And I’m
delighted
to discover that you like my pants so much.’

‘Ha
ha.
I don’t like your pants. I
hate
your pants…’

Pause

‘…So what’s the
point
of it?’

‘Well, traditionally it’s a day on which the monarch likes to hand out cash gifts to paupers, but in terms of purely
religious
observance, it’s generally celebrated,’ he continued, somewhat dogmatically, ‘with the old-fashioned custom of
feet
washing.’

‘Fuck off, you nutter!’

‘Look in the Bible and see for yourself – John XIII. XIV…’

A neat, hardback, King James Bible – its pages held together by an elastic band – came scytheing through the curtains towards her, landing – with a
thwack
– against her cast.

‘
Ow!
Watch out! You tryin’ to take Bible Bashin’ to a whole new level or
what
?!’

Kelly grabbed the Bible and checked the reference (it took some time to find it): John XIII. XIV:

‘If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.’

Que?!

Scogin and his Chamber Fellow (to get back to the
nub
of the
matter) actually imbibe so royally on Maundy Thursday that the Chamber Fellow eventually passes into a dead faint (drunk as a skunk), at which point Scogin cheerfully strips him naked, rolls him up in a sheet and runs around the college telling everyone he’s dead.

The remaining Masters all duly line up to inspect the body, sober preparations are made for a burial, and everything’s proceeding very smoothly, when (
Aaaaarrrrrgh!
) the drunken Fellow suddenly awakens, takes fright, jumps to his feet and begins running around in a total panic. The Masters start yelling and screaming (thinking he’s some kind of ghostly apparition), which makes him panic all the more and run still faster, until (inevitably) his scant coverings promptly fall off (yet more screams from the Masters). It’s at this point (as he’s sprinting about, in the raw, his goolies flapping) that Scogin takes the opportunity to commence yelling: ‘A miracle! A miracle!’, as if testifying to an act of Otherworldly Intervention (It’s
Easter
, now, dammit! He’s gonna be dining out on this sacrilegious little farce for
weeks
!).

!?

Hmmn
…

Well maybe it weren’t actually so funny as all that
…

When the nurse arrived to serve her dinner (an hour or so later) Kelly calmly refused it. ‘I’m dietin’ for Jesus,’ she announced piously (she just
liked
the idea, somehow). ‘Oh…An’ would you mind returnin’ this holy
cosh
to Greta Garbo over there?’

The nurse did as she was bidden, returning the Bible (‘Thank you, nurse,’ he purred, ‘that’s
extremely
kind of you’), but then, when she attempted to serve the Reverend his meal: ‘You know what? I think
I
might diet for Jesus, too…’

Pause

‘…Although a nice, tall glass of iced tomato juice certainly wouldn’t go amiss…’

Pause

‘…a little squeeze of lemon, if it isn’t too much trouble…’

Kelly glanced over towards the curtains, with a scowl.

‘…with just the tiniest
dab
of Worcester Sauce,’ he murmured, ‘to render it more palatable.’

And then, once the nurse had gone: ‘You don’t mind if I keep you company?’ his disembodied voice enquired, cordially.

‘I don’t mind
what
you do,’ Kelly snapped.

‘Holy
cosh
…,’ he mused. ‘That was actually quite funny. Well done
you.
’

Kelly rolled her eyes.

‘So you like giving things up, then, Kelly?’ the Reverend asked.

‘I’d like it if
you
gave up,’ Kelly opined, returning to her reading.

‘Could I ask you a special favour?’ the Reverend wondered.

Kelly glanced over at the curtains for a second time.

‘Nope.’

‘It’s just that now we’re on this
fast
together…’

‘Whaddya mean?
Fast?
I ain’t on no fast.’

‘Now that you’re dieting for
Jesus
…’

‘Who
cares
why I’m dietin’?!’ she expostulated. ‘It ain’t none of your damn
business.
’

‘But it
is
my business,’ he maintained calmly, ‘Jesus is my business, which makes
you
my business.’

Kelly threw down the photocopied sheets with a frustrated hiss.

‘Why’re you in here, anyways?’ she asked, crossing her arms. ‘
Brain
tumour?’

‘I’m here because God willed it,’ he informed her.

‘
Fuck
off!’

‘He struck me down three times…’

‘What? With his
fist
?’

‘…and each time,’ he ignored her, ‘I was blessed with a singular vision.’

Silence

‘An’ what do the doctors make of
that
?’ she asked.

‘Of
what
?’

‘Of God’s willin’ it an’ stuff?’

‘The doctors don’t give a hoot about God’s will. They think it was probably a minor stroke.’

‘But God told you
different
, huh?’ she sneered.

‘Yup.’ Reverend Jacobs seemed very sure on this point.

Kelly snorted, derisively, and grabbed a hold of her papers. She tried to find her place, but couldn’t.

‘If God made you sick,’ she reasoned, slitting her eyes, ‘then why don’t he make you well again?’

‘Ours is not to reason why,’ the Reverend quoted.

‘How old are ya?’ she asked, scowling.

‘I’m forty-two.’

(
Hmmn.
A mite
younger
than she’d calculated.)

‘Old enough to know better…’ she mused.

‘Absolutely
not
,’ he informed her, curtly. ‘And I pray I never
shall
be, either.’

She stared at the curtains, quizzically. ‘Why’d they keep your curtains shut?’

‘It’s the
glare
,’ he sniffed, ‘it makes me dizzy. The environmental
stress.

I’m actually wearing dark glasses behind here.’

Kelly pondered this for a moment.

‘What kind?’ she asked.

‘Calvin Kleins,’ he answered promptly, ‘but a nice pair.’

She frowned.

‘Are you a
real
Reverend, or is it your street name or your
tag
or what?’

‘I suppose you could call me a kind of missionary. I work mainly in Canada. I’ve been on a sabbatical in England for seven months…’

‘I broke my leg in three places,’ Kelly promptly interrupted him, ‘fallin’ off a wall, an’ I’m allergic to prescription painkillers…’

She paused, “spose you prob’ly think God had a hand in that,
too
, huh?’

‘I try
not
to think, in general,’ the Reverend sighed. ‘I find those intellectual Christians such a
bane
, don’t you? I’m what they call a “Charismatic”. I’m sensitive. My relationship with God is predicated not on thought but on
love
.’

?!

Kelly slowly shook her head and returned to her papers. After a minute or so, however, she suddenly looked up, with a nervous start, swore, turned sharply and peered behind her, scowling, as if a mischievous hand had just snapped at her bra strap.

He didn’t know Bixley Woods well. He’d visited them once, at best, ten (possibly even fifteen) years ago. It’d been spring – he recalled – and the Bluebells had been in full splendour; the forest floor a dense and seemingly infinite tapestry of gently shimmering cobalt-blue.