Looking for Mrs Dextrose (19 page)

People normally ride off into the sunset. I was doing the opposite: heading for the sunrise. The tarmac shimmered and the light glared off it, resulting in my permanent
squint.

Elements of the previous night kept returning to me, just when I needed them least, and I hummed favourite songs to myself to ward off the memories. A smattering of Pink Floyd, some Galaxie 500,
David Bowie. Then bastard
Agadoo
became lodged in there and would not shift, no doubt as its cursed writers had intended.

Even that was preferable to reliving Kai’s attentions.

Importos was a dead weight on my back and shoulders, his head resting on top of mine, like we were some sort of totem pole. The first time I braked, for no reason other than boredom, he went
flying off the back, having omitted to hold on, and was knocked unconscious on the road surface. I had to turn the bike around to retrieve him. While I tended to him with water and apologies,
Dextrose’s legs and arse remained sticking out of the sidecar, occasionally twitching, though nothing more energetic.

When I had revived him, Importos rubbed the back of his head vigorously. His dark hair, once shiny with unguents and grease, was grey with dust and windborne particles. His long face was longer
than ever and his mood seemed dark. I recalled his drunken threats and hoped they were idle.

“Why weren’t you holding on?” I asked gently.

“Because to try sleep!” Then he cursed in his own tongue.

“You’re trying to sleep –
on the back of a motorbike?
”

“Where you to say do zen?”

He had a point. The only one of us managing their reasonable quota of shut-eye was Dextrose, through no design of his own. Or perhaps his lifestyle was all based on elaborate forward-planning,
rather than the haphazard hedonism it appeared to be?

An idea came to me. The lapsed explorer was not minor of girth. We could ransack his belongings for a belt, to fasten around myself and Importos. Then, should I brake, provided I could take the
strain, we would both remain on the machine.

It seemed like a reasonable idea.

I unstrapped Dextrose’s mock-leather suitcase and undid the restraining buckle while bottles inside tinkled. It was strange to hold the artefact in my hands. Had that
case travelled the world with him? Had it seen all the sights he had seen?

There was a crumpled old cardboard label tied to the handle and I wondered what secret it might reveal. Perhaps an airline destination – even Dextrose’s home address?

Instead, it read: ‘Woolworths £2.99’.

I pushed the buttons and the two catches thunked up. Importos moved closer, as anxious as I to peer inside.

Now, bearing in mind that Dextrose’s recommended packing list had appeared in
The Lost Incompetent
, and included such genuinely essential items as: clothing,
sleeping bag, compass, billy-can and first-aid kit, I detected a faint whiff of hypocrisy when I opened his own case and found nothing but bottles of beer and whiskey. I had expected to find
something useful, even a spare pair of socks would have been a start – certainly not just booze. Even assuming a well-meaning, loyal Quench had packed for him, the conclusion was inescapable:
it represented the extent of Dextrose’s fall from any form of professionalism.

He had on him what he was wearing, and I hoped those overcoat pockets were deep, because if he had come without money we weren’t going to be flying home to Britain once we had recovered
Mrs Dextrose.

He had to buck up his ideas, and I knew where to start.

“Here, Importos,” I said, “grab a couple of those bottles. We’re going to empty them into the sand.”

Despite his hangover, he must have rumbled the excessive spontaneity of the idea. “No-no-no,” he said. “Head to pain now, no later. We to keep. I to need”

However, I was in no mood for arguing and picked out two bottles of finest Irish whiskey, walked out into the sand, threw one down beside me, unscrewed the top off the other and began pouring.
Golden liquid glug-glug-glugged into the silica grains and I smiled with satisfaction.

Casting the empty aside I unscrewed the other bottle’s cap…

It was as if he had smelled the fumes, even as he slept. A great hollow bellow of rage came from within the tin-can sidecar and I turned to see Dextrose’s fat little legs kicking furiously
in his pink togs, as if the anti-Santa had become trapped down a chimney.

“NO YER DON’T, YER MINK!” he raged, hollow-sounding, scrabbling furiously to push himself out of the compartment. “DON’TYER MINKIN’ DARE!”

Then, unexpectedly, he fell silent. All anyone around would have heard would have been the dainty ‘blibble-ibble-ibble ibble-ib’ of the final dregs of booze departing their
bottle.

Next came a blood-curdling scream. It was terrible to hear. Genuine dread.

“GETUSOUTOFHERE!” he wailed, redoubling his frantic efforts to release himself. But he was well jammed in and his general lack of fitness and blubber-buggered centre of gravity did
him no favours.

Importos made a break for it, jogged up the road and sat on the kerb, where he began rocking backwards and forwards. It left me, grabbing handfuls of overcoat, to heave
Dextrose out of his hellhole.

He sat up and pointed towards the sidecar. “E-e-e-e-evil,” he stammered.

“What is it?” I asked.

“E-e-e-e-evil,” was all he could utter.

I fully expected something to crawl out over the rim of the sidecar. Something crested or poisonous. We waited for full minutes, but nothing did.

Dextrose curled into a ball and lay on his side in the sand, sucking his thumb. Once again, it would be down to me to take charge. I couldn’t pretend that the idea appealed.

I needed a weapon and had an idea. Crawling close to the ground, as I had seen SAS types do in movies, I returned to Dextrose’s suitcase and slipped out the last two bottles of whiskey. He
made no move to stop me. That’s how shaken he was.

Rising to my feet I smashed the bottles together, sending broken glass flying and showering myself in booze. I heard Dextrose whimper, but that was the extent of his protest. What the hell was
in that sidecar?

I strode manfully forward at first, then thought better of it and began crawling like a baby. The metal panelling was so hot to the touch that I could not press my ear against
it, so instead I pricked up my ears and listened intently. Not a peep.

Must be something small and deadly, I imagined, clutching the broken bottles as Evel Knievel must have gripped his handlebars.

The longer I stayed there, the likelier I was to be attacked, so I knew I had to go for it. Up, peek, down.

What had I registered in that split second? Just a battered old leather seat (empty) and the gloomy depths of the sidecar. Nothing had attacked me and that, at least, gave me heart. Perhaps
Dextrose had imagined the horror or had woken from a nightmare?

I rose again, slower this time, and peered over the sidecar’s rim, deep into the shadows. Then I too saw it.

Yelping, I pushed myself away and landed on the ground. Even as that happened I realised what I had seen.

Reaching down into the footwell with fingertips I just managed to grab hold of a leg. I dragged out the ‘evil’ and held it aloft.

Dextrose shielded his face in fear, but gradually realised his folly. “What the mink is that?” he asked.

“It’s the Shaman’s dummy,” I said.

It all came flooding back. I had stolen the dummy in retribution and had lobbed it into the sidecar. Presumably, when I crashed, it had been sent flying forward into that dark
recess. So it had been there all along, obscured to Dextrose by his gut – until he’d gone in head-first.

His footprints were all over the dark dinner suit, the top hat was missing – probably crumpled somewhere in the sidecar – the cracked glass had fallen out of its monocle frame, which
remained suspended by string from the breast pocket, its face was dirtied and its nose had been knocked off. Yet, even with those injuries, it retained the power to unnerve.

Dextrose heaved himself up, dusted himself down, and said: “Get rid of it.”

He was right. That
thing
carried with it all manner of bad karma. I clutched the dummy by one of its scrawny arms and tossed it as far as I could into the sands. It flew like laundry and,
being so defiantly unaerodynamic, didn’t travel very far, although it did land in a satisfying heap with one leg sticking up like a makeshift gravestone. And that was the end of that.

“Right, now yer can take us back to Gossips,” said Dextrose.

Why hadn’t I seen that coming? “But… Dad. You do know where we’re going, don’t you?”

“Does I look like Einstein?” he shot back.

The hair, yes. The rest of him, no. He looked fucking terrible, like something you’d discover under rubble after a nuclear war.

“We’re trying to find your wife.”

He didn’t seem to recognise the concept, so I added, “Mrs Dextrose.”

He shook his head. “Some other time.”

Not now, not after how far we’d come. “No,” I said. “We have to go.” It was time I stood up to him.

He reached into a tweed overcoat pocket, pulled out a pistol and levelled it at me.

“I said. Some. Other. Minking. Time.”

I studied the gun: an ancient-looking silver, chipped revolver, long-barrelled, perhaps a relic of the Wild West. Though still potentially deadly. Had I known he was armed, I would never have
brought him with me.

I forced myself to remain calm. “Where did you get that?”

He shrugged. “Found it just then, in me pocket. Seem to recall one of them hop-sozzled cud-munchers in that bar giving it us, once I’d told them what a devious woman’s mind you
possessed. Pilsbury – us own flesh and blood an’ all.”

Wow. First time he’d remembered who I was unprompted. But he was all show, surely? He wouldn’t use it. No chance, not even him, deprived of alcohol and home comforts, kidnapped,
brutalised by the elements, dragged through broken glass…

I didn’t dare risk it.

So that was it, then. The game was up. I was returning to Gossips and Mrs Dextrose would remain lost forever… Could I somehow disarm him, I wondered? Given his creaking reactions? Then
again, could I disarm anyone?

“OK, you win,” I said. “But I wish you’d reconsider. We’ve done enough drinking. We should find Mrs Dextrose.”

A thought flitted across his eyes. “Not today.” He waved the gun at me. “Get in the sidecar. I’ll drive.”

Having turned the bike around to pick up Importos, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was going the wrong way when he swung it 180 with an uncharacteristic whoop. As
any budding mathematician will tell you, two negatives make a positive.

“Mr Dextrose, can we pick up Importos?” I asked, as we reached the tall man.

“EH?” He couldn’t hear me over the engine.

“CAN WE PICK UP IMPORTOS?”

“WHO?”

Hardly spoilt for choice. “HIM SULKING AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.”

“WHY?”

“BECAUSE OTHERWISE HE’LL DIE OUT HERE.”

I couldn’t have the demise of both brothers on my conscience.

Dextrose stopped the bike but kept the engine running.

“Hop on,” I told Importos.

“No. He mad,” he replied, and started jogging away.

I called after him: “I don’t think he meant it.”

Importos only jogged faster.

We caught him up again.

“You’ll die of thirst,” I pointed out.

He slowed down then stopped, glaring at me with intent. His basketball outfit was sand-stained and distressed. Sweat poured off his forehead.

I tapped Dextrose. “DAD, CAN WE STOP, PLEASE?”

He did so. Not only that, but I had referred to him as ‘Dad’ in a very loud voice and he’d neither snorted nor denied the association. More than that, I had developed the
confidence unselfconsciously to do so.

While Importos took on liquid, Dextrose turned to me. Though it was hard to tell, in a face that looked like four-cheese pizza, I fancied he was trying his damndest to look tender.
“Pilsbury,” he said. “Back there. I wouldn’t have minking shot yer.”

Now that, I thought, is proper parenting.