Weaveworld

the bride.

‘A word, Cal, m’boy?’ he said, glancing across at Elroy.

‘I’ll catch you later,’ Elroy said, retreating in case Norman nabbed him too.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

‘Yes, Mr Kellaway.’

‘Less of this Mr Kellaway shit, Cal. Call me Norm.’

He poured a generous measure of whisky from the bottle he was armed with into Cal’s lager glass, then drew on his cigar.

‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘How long before I have to give my other little girl away? Don’t think I’m pushing, son. I’m not. But one bride in labour’s enough.’

Cal swilled the whisky around the bottom of his glass, hoping for a prompt from the poet. None came.

‘I’ve got a job for you at the works,’ Norm went on, unfazed by Cal’s silence. ‘I want to see my baby live in a little style. You’re a good lad, Cal. Her mother likes you a lot, and I always trust her judgment. So you think on it…’

He transferred the bottle to his cigar-wielding right hand, and reached into his jacket.

The gesture, innocent as it was, brought a chill of recognition. For an instant Cal was back in Rue Street, gazing into the enchanted cave of Shadwell’s jacket. But Kellaway had simpler gifts to give.

‘Have a cigar,’ he said, and went off to his duties as host.

2

Elroy picked up another can of beer from the bar then headed out into the garden in search of Loretta. The air was considerably cooler than inside, and as soon as it hit him he felt sick as a flea in a leper’s jock strap. He tossed the beer aside and headed towards the bottom of the garden, where he could throw up unseen.

The coloured lights stopped a few yards from the hall, where the cable petered out. Beyond was a welcoming darkness, which he plunged into. He was used to vomiting; a week in which his stomach didn’t rebel through some excess or other was poorly spent. He efficiently discharged the contents of his belly over a rhododendron bush, then turned his thoughts back to the lovely Loretta.

A little way from where he stood the leaf-shadow, or something concealed by it, moved. He peered more closely, trying to interpret what he saw, but there was not sufficient illumination to make sense of it. He heard a sigh however: a woman’s sigh.

There was a couple in the shelter of the tree, he decided, doing what darkness had been created to conceal. Perhaps it was Loretta, her skirt up and her knickers down. It would break his heart, but he had to see.

Very quietly, he advanced a couple of paces.

On his second step, something grazed his face. He stifled a cry of shock and put his hand up to find strands of matter in the air around his head. For some reason he thought of phlegm – cold, wet threads of phlegm – except that they moved against his flesh as if they were a part of something larger.

A heart-beat later this notion was confirmed, as the matter, which was adhering now to his legs and body, pulled him off his feet. He would have let out a cry, but the filthy stuff had already sealed up his lips. And then, as if this were not preposterous enough, he felt a chill around his lower belly. His trousers were being torn open. He started to fight like fury, but resistance was fruitless. There was a weight bearing down on his abdomen and hips, and he felt his manhood drawn up into a channel that might have been flesh, but that it was corpse cold.

Tears of panic blurred his vision, but he could see that the thing astride him had a human form. He could see no face, but the breasts were heavy the way he liked them, and though this was far from the scene he’d pictured with Loretta his lust ignited, his little length responding to the chilly ministrations of the body that contained him.

He raised his head slightly, wanting a better view of those sumptuous breasts, but in doing so he caught sight of another figure behind the first. She was the antithesis of the ripe, gleaming woman that rode him: a stained, wretched thing, with gaping holes in her body where cunt and mouth and navel should have been, so large the stars showed through from the other side.

He started to fight afresh, but his thrashings did nothing to slow his mistress’ rhythm. Despite his panic he felt the familiar tremor in his balls.

In his head half a dozen pictures collided, becoming one monstrous beauty: the ragged woman, a necklace of coloured lights hanging between her sister’s breasts, raised her skirts, and the mouth between her legs was Loretta’s mouth, flicking its tongue. He could not resist this pornography: his prick spat its load. He howled against the seal at his mouth. The pleasure was short, the pain that followed, agonizing.

‘What’s your fuckin’ problem?’ somebody said in the darkness. It took him a moment to realize that his cry for help had been heard. He opened his eyes. The silhouettes of the trees loomed over him, but that was all.

He started to shout again; not caring that he was lying in the muck with his trousers around his ankles. Just needing to know he was still in the land of the living –

3

The first glimpse Cal had of trouble was through the bottom of his glass, as he upped it to drain the last of Norman’s malt whisky. At the door two of the printers from the Kellaway factory, who were acting as bouncers for the night, were engaged in friendly conversation with a man in a well-cut suit. Laughing, the man glanced into the hall. It was Shadwell.

The jacket was closed and buttoned. There was no need, it seemed, for supernatural seductions; the Salesman was buying his entrance with charm alone. Even as Cal watched he patted one of the men on the shoulder as if they’d been bosom-buddies since childhood, and stepped inside.

Cal didn’t know whether to stay still and hope that the crowd would conceal him, or make a move to escape and so risk drawing the enemy’s attention. As it was he had no choice in the matter, A hand was over his, and at his side stood one of the aunts Geraldine had introduced him to.

‘So tell me,’ she said, apropos of nothing, ‘have you been to America?’

‘No,’ he said, looking away from her powdered face towards the Salesman. He was entering the hall with flawless confidence, bestowing smiles hither and thither. His appearance won admiring eyes on all sides. Somebody extended a hand to be shaken; another asked him what he was drinking. He played the crowd with ease, a smiling word offered to every ear, all the while his eyes ranging back and forth as he sought out his quarry.

As the distance between them narrowed Cal knew he couldn’t long avoid being seen. Claiming his hand from the grip of the aunt he headed off into the thickest pan of the crowd. A hubbub drew his attention to the far end of the hall, where he saw somebody – it looked to be Elroy – being carried in from the garden, his clothes in filthied disarray, his jaw slack. Nobody seemed much bothered by his condition – every gathering had its share of professional drunkards. There was laughter, and some disapproving looks, then a rapid return to jollification.

Cal glanced back over his shoulder. Where was Shadwell? Still close to the door, pressing the flesh like an aspirant politician? No; he’d moved. Cal scanned the room nervously. The noise and the dancing went on unabated, but now the sweating faces seemed a mite too hungry for happiness; the dancers only dancing because it put the world away for a little time. There was a desperation in this jamboree, and Shadwell knew how to exploit it, with his stale bonhomie and that air he pretended of one who’d walked with the great and the good.

Cal itched to get up onto a table and tell the revellers to stop their cavortings; to see for themselves how foolish their revels looked, and how dangerous the shark they’d invited into their midst.

But what would they do, when he’d shouted himself hoarse? Laugh behind their hands, and quietly remind each other that he had a madman’s blood in his veins?

He’d find no allies here. This was Shadwell’s territory. The safest thing would be to keep his head down, and negotiate a route to the door. Then get away, as far as possible as fast as possible.

He acted upon the plan immediately. Thanking God for the lack of light, he began to slip between the dancers, keeping his eyes peeled for the man with the coat of many colours.

There was a shout behind him. He glanced round, and through the milling figures caught sight of Elroy, who was thrashing about like an epileptic, yelling blue murder. Somebody was calling for a doctor.