The Fungus

“No, straight up. I read it in The Sun, I think. Or maybe The Daily Mail. It’s something to do with the vitamins in the vegetables. They make the meat fat burn up without you having to do any exercise.”

“How about that.”

“You should try it yourself, Phil. You could do with losing a few pounds too.”

“Well, maybe,” said Bell, even though he knew he wasn’t over-weight in the slightest.

“You don’t have to go all the way at once. You can have, say, a meat madras with a cauliflower bhajee. Cauliflower must have lots of those vitamins.”

Bell nodded thoughtfully. Lang took it for agreement and called Naseem over. He ordered food for both of them and another pint of lager each. “You’ll thank me for this,” he said.

“I will if you pay,” said Bell and laughed uproariously.

The evening went quickly as they swapped jokes and solved the various social and political issues of the day. Bell even enjoyed his cauliflower bhajee, but Lang hadn’t been so keen on his vegetable biriani this time and consoled himself with the thought of having a doner kebab on the way home.

When they finally lurched, belching and laughing, out of the restaurant it was after 11 p.m. They had each consumed seven pints of lager by then and had reached the stage when everything they said was even more devastatingly funny than usual.

Naseem bore their lengthy farewell routine with the stoicism that any Indian waiter working in Britain must quickly acquire and breathed a silent prayer of thanks when, after a final volley of “Panjits,” the two men staggered away.

They walked up to Warren Street station where they went their separate ways, Lang catching the Victoria Line and Bell the Northern.

Lang changed onto the Piccadilly Line at Kings Cross. He got out at Bounds Green and went straight to his studio flat, having decided he was too full of lager for a kebab after all. And anyway there was something he had to take care of rather urgently. All the walking had made his feet noticeably sweaty, and he was worried about his athlete’s foot.

He’d suffered from it badly on a few occasions—toes cracking apart, pain like his flesh was being split with a knife—so now he always kept his socks filled with Preparation AF and every morning and night carefully smeared the powder and cream between his toes.

It had always been a matter of some pride to him that he suffered from athlete’s foot. It confirmed his belief that within his bulky frame a potential athlete was waiting to get out. And when he succeeded in finally getting his weight down he fully intended taking up some athletic activity. Like squash or badminton. Or maybe sky-diving. Sky-diving didn’t involve much running about.

After the nightly foot ritual Lang crawled into bed and switched off the lamp. He was too tired to see if there was anything on TV. He fell asleep almost immediately but slept badly. He tossed and turned in the grip of horrific dreams for several hours and then came fully awake to discover he was suffering an appalling attack of indigestion. “Goddam vegetable biriani! he muttered. Never again! ”

And on top of that he was itchy all over, his feet especially. Had the Indian food aggravated his athlete’s foot? It never had before.

He lay there for a time hoping the itching would fade, but if anything it got worse. He had no choice but to apply more Preparation AF.

With a sigh he sat up and switched on the light. He pushed back the covers and frowned. Then he laughed. No wonder his feet were itching—he was still wearing his socks.

Then he frowned again. He had taken them off. He distinctly remembered doing so. In fact he didn’t even recognize these socks. He was positive he didn’t own a pair this color—gray with a red pattern.

He reached down to take them off and his fingers sank into the fluffy pulp that was now his right foot.

His heart gave a massive thump, paused and carried on. His flesh crawled with revulsion and his insides seemed to shrink. His fingers, shaking now, fumbled at the other foot. It felt the same—soft and yielding as if it was boneless.

His scream came out as a croak. Then, as he became more aware of the general itchiness all over his body, he tore furiously at his pajama jacket.

“Oh God,” he whimpered.

His lower belly was covered in the same gray, red-streaked substance. He managed to undo his pajama pants and, terrified at what he expected to see, looked at his groin and thighs. It was as he feared—from his waist down it was as if he’d been coated in some kind of furry paint that had started to crack. He reached tentatively to touch the mound that now concealed his genitals. It felt like velvet-pattern wallpaper.

“Christ,” he moaned, “I’ve been poisoned—that bloody Indian restaurant—”

He had to get help, he decided. He got quickly out of bed and took two steps towards the phone before his left leg, riddled with the athlete’s foot fungus, snapped at the shin with a sound like a piece of celery being broken.

He fell on his face with a crash that shook the floor and lay there in a state of shock for over a minute. Then, with painful slowness, he started to drag himself toward the phone. His lower left leg remained on the floor beside the bed. And as he crawled he left a trail of crumbling gray powder behind him on the carpet.

4

Tuesday, 10.55 p.m.

The landlord of the One Tun, Eric Gifford, decided to check the Lounge Bar on his way back up from the men’s room in the basement. It was, he saw, almost empty except for a few of the regulars. No matter, he’d had a good night’s take in the Public Bar, he told himself.

It was then he noticed the tall, blonde woman drinking a red wine by herself at a table near the door. Odd to see a woman drinking alone in this pub, but she looked too well bred to be a whore. Then again, he reflected, you got some unusual types of women on the game these days. He blamed the recession.

He looked at her more closely and then decided he’d seen her before. She wasn’t a regular but she was definitely familiar. Maybe she’d only been in the pub once before, but he remembered her face. It wasn’t the sort of face a man was likely to forget. She was a looker, all right, and from what he could see of her body it made a good match with her face.

He whistled as he headed back to the Public Bar. Looking at beautiful women always cheered him up. Even at times like this when his bowels were playing up.

It was all the fault of the Yard of Ale competition he’d organized earlier in the evening. He hadn’t actually taken part in it, because he was too good, but as usual he’d given a demonstration of how it should be done just to impress the young’uns. Oh, he knew they wouldn’t be impressed to begin with but later when they were pouring beer all over themselves or choking or giving up halfway it would dawn on them they’d seen a master of the art in action. And then he’d really rub it in when it was all over by casually downing a second yard of ale, which is what he’d done tonight as usual. He’d managed it okay but it had been a struggle at the end, he had to admit. His guts had been giving him hell all day and this had been his fifth trip to the toilet, without success. He was so constipated he felt like a pregnant elephant. Perhaps he’d better do what his damned doctor kept advising and cut down on the drink. One of these days.

Despite his acute discomfort he pulled himself together as he entered the public bar and began the task of getting people to drink up with his customary diplomacy:

“Come on, you drunken buggers! Haven’t you got homes to go to?” he bellowed.

He loved to play the tough landlord and, although the regulars knew it was all a game, the tourists and other drop-ins always looked satisfyingly alarmed when his red-faced, pot-bellied form appeared suddenly in their midst breathing fumes and yelling insults at them. It was always a great way to end the day.

And as a point of principle, when everyone was gone he always helped to clean up. He knew he was often