Decay Inevitable

Snuffling and choking and coughing. I can see by your face you know who I’m talking about. He took the parcel and told us to wait. We were there for about half an hour, standing around, waiting. When he came back he had mud on his feet and he gave Vernon a couple of pebbles from his pocket. Do I eat this, I asked and Vernon started laughing his head off. The sickly kid was laughing too, but it was the kind of laughter people do when they don’t get the joke, but don’t want to be seen to not get the joke. Put it in your pocket, Vernon says. So I do and I sleep the sleep of kings that night and when I wake up in the morning I check for the pebble and it’s gone and I look in the mirror and all my grey hair has vanished.

That was 1970.

Couple of years ago, I’m with Vernon at a night club. This streak of piss called Norman Spence ran the place. Vernon had sorted him out with a loan and now he’s prospering, his club doing really well. We go round there for an eye. Eyes are needed for some reason. Vernon doesn’t get a chance to touch Norman, to bring in Dr. Chater. Doesn’t even get an audience with him. Bouncers pull guns on us. Guns are the thing now. I’m wondering, as this meathead draws a bead on me, is that one of the guns I carried off the boat all those years ago when I had a wet nose and wide eyes? Could be. Bastard shoots me through the throat. Tears half of it out. Vernon got me out of there. God knows how. Hail of bullets. He patches me up. We get Norman back. We sort him out. You might bump into him if you go paddling in the Mersey. I stick around for a while but my nerve has gone. It’s time to hand in my notice. Tears and hugs and take it easy mate, see you around.

He’s still caught up in it, Vernon. In his eyes, when I called it a day, I could see him thinking I was a jammy sod. I could see him wishing for what I had done. He’s been at it a long time. Maybe that payment, those pebbles, maybe it was worth it for a while. But you get trapped, don’t you? If he stopped now, what would happen to him? All that time, that experience, all of it comes piling down on you, crushes you. It would kill him to give it up now. He knows that. He has to carry on. He has to keep giving, in order to receive. He’s the most generous man in the world, but he doesn’t have a say in the matter.

Kev said, “Vernon Lord was born in 1892.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE GRAND PANJANDRUM

WHEN IT BECAME apparent that Sadie wanted someone dead, there weren’t as many rushing for the exits as Will might have anticipated. Some volunteered. And if Will had realised what was lined up for him, he might well have done the same. There was plenty of genuflecting going on as she stepped down from the stage and walked among the punters, the utricle hanging off her side sloshing in time to the swing of her hips. The sad-looking, pickled thing within turned and turned, its ill-formed arms hugging itself. Will realised what it was in George and Alice that he had recognised. It was Sadie.

Brad Pitt was back on stage now, trying to calm everybody down. He minced around, patting down his oily hair and lifting his voice to compete with the hubbub as people threw themselves at locked doors or tried to break windows with chairs.

“This guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a double entendre. So the bartender gave him one. Now then! Hey?”

Nobody was listening. Will slipped over the bar and knelt among the beertaps and barsnacks. From his position he could look up at the splashback mirror that ran the length of the bar beneath the optics and watch as Sadie stalked among the audience, rating and discarding potential victims. It took a few seconds for him to realise that there was another man down here with him, cowering just a foot to his left.

“Hi,” Will said. The other regarded him as if he had just extracted a monkey from his ear.

“Do you know who this bitch is?” he asked.

“Yes,” Will said. “Her name is Sadie. I rescued her from a bunch of travellers a couple of weeks ago. She’s a real handful.”

Will was rewarded with a slow shaking of the head, from the moment he had begun to speak. The monkey had become a belly-dancing piglet wearing nipple-rings.

“That’s Sigourney Weaver,” the man hissed. “The piece of skirt that bosses this place.”

“The bar?”

“No. The entire place. Queen bitch.”

“Really? She’s just a spoilt brat, you know. More trouble than good.”

The man was looking in the mirror now, his eyes widening all the time. He reached up and loosened the knot in his tie. “Okay. Well if you know her so well, put her in her place.” With that, he launched himself away from the box of crisps he was hiding behind, vaulted the counter, and hurled himself through the window into the night. When Will returned his gaze to the mirror, Sadie was standing at the bar, regarding him coolly.

“Fix us both a drink, Will,” she said. “On the house.”

“ARE YOU GOING to sacrifice me?” he asked.

Sadie, halfway into a swallow, looked at him uncomprehendingly and burst into laughter, spraying some of her champagne on his shirt. “God no,” she said, when she had finally managed to compose herself. “My hero. My saviour. Why should I do that?”

“You were looking for sacrifices.”

“And I’ll have one,” she assured him. “But not you. Not Uncle Will. There’s better in store for you. A more noble role.”

“What happened to you and Elisabeth, when I left you?” he asked, steeling himself for some awful reportage of what the mountaineer had done to them after the crash.

The bar had been emptied. Once it was clear that Sigourney Weaver had someone in her clutches, widespread calm had broken out. The bartenders reappeared and unlocked the doors, and people filed into the foggy twilight, chatting about where they were going to spend the rest of their evenings. Now a few bartenders were clearing away glasses and wiping down the tables. Bouncers were gathered by the doors, arms folded, nodding apocalyptically. Brad Pitt was sitting on the edge of the stage with a half a lager and his pants unbuttoned to allow his beer belly a breather, crooning to one of the cleaners who was gazing at him, a bucketful of cigarette ends in her hands.

“We’ll come to that, presently,” Sadie said. “In here, little man, you are no longer the boss. This is my playground. My sandpit.”

“How long have you been in a coma?” Will asked. Sadie laughed again. Maybe she was laughing because Will was studiously avoiding the obvious question. Maybe she was laughing because she found his questions to be piffling and trivial. Whatever, it was pissing Will off.

“I’m not in a coma, chucky-egg. It’s you who’s in a coma. You and all the other veg-heads floating around here.”

“You’re deluding yourself.”

“Am I?”

“Everyone here...”

“Everyone here is in a coma. Except me.”

Will looked around him, bored by the argument. “Tell me what happened to Elisabeth. Is she here?”

Sadie took a sip from her glass and rearranged the sac on her knees. The homunculus within rolled onto its back and gazed at her through the milky suspension with pale eyes. “I told you, we’ll come to that. When I say.”

Will turned the frosted glass in his fingers, spreading a base of condensation across the scarred bartop. He said, “If you’re not in a coma, what are you doing here?”

“Putting the fear of God up my subjects.”