Authors: D. F. Lewis
Lope paused from quoting Sudra, with tears in his eyes.
“Is that all that was spoken by Sudra?” asked the dowager, wondering why she, Edith, was still holding up the parasol when the sun had long since vanished behind the clouds.
“I may not have quoted exactly.”
“Yes, but was there any more?”
“I don’t know. I had to leave the theatre in a hurry to meet you here.”
“I wouldn’t have minded if you stayed to hear the end.”
“Well, I felt too sad to listen to more. I recognised myself in that bit about madness. And in that bit about children growing up too quickly.”
“We all grow old too quick. There’s nothing new in that.”
“And we all grow confused and unsure of our bearings.”
“And of who is speaking...”
“…to whom?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe God meant it to happen this way.”
At this moment, crowds began to pour silently from the Hall’s entrance at the other side of the square. Many of them raised umbrellas over their heads as it was now raining. And many did not. Sudra, uniquely coloured, was among them pushing a doll—in a toy pram or wheeled flowerpot depending on the distance with which one was viewing it. A zoom lens would have revealed a stub of a pencil stuck in one of the doll’s eyes, perhaps evidence of an earlier tantrum—also that Sudra was bare-footed. At least, one hopes that Sudra
had
reached the outside, because a giant complex UFO accidentally clipped a pylon and finally collided with the Hall where she had been speaking... followed by a roar of splintering off-detritus more suitable for a strapped-bomb christened Sunnemo finally imploding.
*
The waitresses were generously supplied, almost one for each table.
The tea-room was very swish, plenty of smooth freshly laundered white linen, silver napkin rings embossed with antlered deer and pentinent youths, sturdy chunky heavy-duty yet good quality cutlery... and large bowls of fresh flowers pricked out in bright colours and still drenched in dew.
He ordered a tier of cakes, licking his lips at the thought of the custard slices, cream cones, coconut pyramids, battenburgs topped with whipped almond, spicy bread-and-butter pudding baked to a rich brown crust, waffles dripping in wild honey...
The particular waitress attending to his needs was no older than his own daughter, the prettiest of the whole bunch, he thought. She wore a uniform which, rather than hiding her figure, accentuated its more sensuous angles, as if an artist had finished off an otherwise boring portrait with the subtle pastel striptease of water-colour.
The skirt-length was below her knees, but the slender calves and dimpled ankles were all the more enticing for that. The stockings were of such low denier, they took nothing from the flesh.
The tea infused him, like a heady drug. The blends reached to the back of his throat, even before he lifted the bone china to his lips. And he stared dreamily across the tea-room, as the waitress turned her back to fetch from the display counter further cakes he had ordered. Her rear proportions were slight enough to retain the integrity of the skirt-length, but womanly enough to produce folds, pleats, flairs and a long sculptured quarter-moon down each side... that made him want to touch, if only fleetingly.
The other waitresses were nothing in comparison: mere bodies holding up their uniforms like clothes-horses for airing. One even had a face that reminded him of his nightmares... and she had the temerity to scold his own waitress for picking up the cakes with her fingers rather than with the tongs.
He half rose from his chair, as if to remonstrate: he could not wish for anything better than to have the comestibles handled by his waitress, to produce a new flavour, whether imaginary or not, that would backwash the roof of his mouth with the froth of love...
He thought better of it. The tongs would have to do. The winsome one returned with the second tier of cakes, smiling fit to take sunshine into the dreariest late afternoon.
Her skirt-length lightly brushed his arm, inadvertently, and he bit his tongue painfully to stop himself from...
She had gone far too quick. Evidently the end of her duty, disappearing into the kitchen, with not even a backward glance for her erstwhile loyal loving customer.
His teeth entered an angel cake, leaving daubs of red where his injured tongue had probed its texture...
He cursed and left the tea-room, paying the nightmare waitress; she worked the old-fashioned cash register as if she were issuing tickets for a dubious show in that other part of London he sometimes frequented. Being in so much of a hurry, he even forget to retrieve the large gratuity he had left under the bone china saucer: it had been intended of course for the waitress with the sunny smile who, like him, had taken such a sudden departure into the gloom of dusk. Perhaps intent on catching a train before it left. Air-raid sirens permitting.
*
The view through the cockpit window—as the vast Circular-Saw penetrated the cavity-walls of Inner Earth—was not so much a panorama of the reality beyond the window but of a moment of strobe-history that the pilot who peered through the window was undergoing as he instinctively tussled with the controls.
His dream of strobe-history showed twin Earths that were on a collision course—through the wide vista of his vision. Instead of creating a huge explosion, they blended or merged in the same way that, once upon a time, the legendary man-city, having begun to bury itself beyond its own foundations, eventually encountered another city with initial splintering ricochets of architecture and hard core but then blended with it—thus making two places the same place but different.
The pilot of the Saw quickly regathered his present moment uncorrupted by any dream of strobe-history just in time to address the situation of a Drill making towards him.
*
My custom was to explore secondhand bookshops at the slightest opportunity. It needed guile to shake off Beth and the children—but, one day in Whofage, I had a rare success in subterfuge. We were about to traipse around a toy museum and, without giving them a chance to reply, I told them that I would be back in half an hour to conduct them onwards to the various amusements in the ‘Klaxon City’ amusement arcade that needed coins in the slots.
I had indeed spotted a wondrous curiosity shop on the approach to the toy museum, hidden to the view of my wife and children (and of most other visitors, too). But my expert tunnel vision having picked it out down a Sunnemo-less alley, I was convinced by my instinct that it would purvey a veritable trove of dusty books. And I was not mistaken. However, it proved not very different from what I imagined the toy museum to be, since in every corner there seemed to reside many ancient jacks-in-the-box, china dolls, jingle-jangly shoes, pop-up nursery rhyme books and colourful whips and spinning-tops—but here they were for sale rather than show. If I had known, I could have killed two birds with one stone by bringing my family here.
The books themselves were a dream. First editions galore with lightly pencilled prices on the fly-leaves, some even within the range of my purse. Others, of course, not. Many were Victorian, but mostly hardbacks (with original dust-wrappers) from the twenties, thirties and forties, children’s dreams and adults’ fancies.
I was surprised to discover an old stamp album: full of colourful squares, oblongs and triangles (and even one large colourful trapezium of a stamp from Agraska), carefully affixed with sticky paper hinges. I imagined a child (now grown into an adult more long in the tooth even than myself) meticulously wielding tweezers, positioning his prize specimens at the optimum angle and sitting back sighing with pride. This boy would have eschewed even birdsong or playtime in the sunshine for such a close-ordered activity.
My surprise was generated by the fact that such an article was stacked with the secondhand books, bulging as it was with well-hung stamps. Some of the stamps looked “rare”, but many must have been gathered together from a lucky-dip selection which children used to obtain by sending off a coupon from the Tiger or Lion or Eagle comics. The stamps used to come “on approval”. But there were some examples of stamps in this album that I had not been able to even dream about when I was that age.
I covetted that album more than anything I could recall covetting before. I held a whole childhood between my fingers. But there was no price pencilled, presumably because the fly-leaf was covered with a highly stylised map of the surface world. So, that was where Saar was. And Andorra, San Marino, British Honduras, Monaco and St Helena. Nobody ever seemed surprised that most of these small places had outlandishly large postage stamps. I looked round for the shop counter, fully expecting a wizened old man to be stationed behind it—one with pipe, toothbrush moustache and eyes bleary from poring over small print. But this was a day full of surprises—since a girl of surpassing beauty smiled at me from behind the counter, appearing as cool as her flowingly diaphonous dress of white…
I collected my family who were impatiently kicking their heels outside the museum. Apparently, it was a natural history exhibition. Why I had originally thought it was a toy museum, I could not now fathom. What was abundantly clear, my wife and children had been bored and decidedly crotchety at my lengthy absence from their party. I blamed it on having been cut short and the nearest convenience a fair step away. And it had not been a particular pleasure, I assured them, standing next to all those sweaty individuals and the many ‘nervous little people’ who followed us around in Whofage. But my family soon oozed forgiveness when I changed my remaining ten bob note for 120 pennies at the ‘Klaxon City’ arcade. The old wizened fellow who sat behind the towers of copper quarter p coins in the change booth actually winked at me. He looked decidedly unhinged.
As I tried my luck on the fortune-wheel, which was supposed to give some inkling into one’s future love-life and luck, I suddenly wondered why stamp collections always used to be conducted by short-arse boys who did not have many friends with whom to go scrumping apples or building dens. I could not possibly imagine those unattainable angelic girls of my lonely childhood abandoning their china dolls and dressing-up hampers for such close-ordered activities as mounting stamps.
The fortune-wheel did not record any romance in store for me. In fact, the bad luck it indicated seemed to start with me somehow losing the stamp album soon afterwards. Like the beautiful ghost who sold it to me, it must have slipped through my fingers.
*
For an indeterminate period, Greg, Beth and their two children, Arthur and Amy, toured the streets of Whofage, but instead of relaxing during this interlude in their train journey they were beset with an antipodal angst which involved thoughts that they may not get back to the station before the train left for Sunnemo. This was an undercurrent that made all their activities fraught with an anxiety, an anxiety that soon grew tentacles (giving new worries leg room) including one significant nagging doubt that they had already travelled to Sunnemo before and finished their lives there during a dream—but now the anxiety became more relevant because they feared that
that
was no dream and the real dream was this their seemingly endless temporary stay-over in Whofage. If the latter is a dream, why worry? Dreams can’t hurt you. Or so the parents told the children.
Other factors lengthening the tentacles of angst included the so-called ‘nervous little people’ that seemed to plague them at every turning of the city. They were seeking identities and, if this
were
a dream after all, then identities
could
be stolen and used elsewhere. So one remedy of an angst as a dream had soon created a new angst! These creatures—of human persuasion—nevertheless chirruped like chickflicks on continuous strobe. One or two even sported beaks instead of lips.
Another tentacle of angst: Sunnemo was looming closer and if it grew even closer as a dull light source or even a surrogate nemo-moon, then there would be no need to return to the train to reach their destination at all! Greg decided to shrug off the angst and ensure he and his family at least pretended to themselves that they were enjoying their stay-over. Pleased, too, to see that Sudra’s Shoes Inc. had a branch here as well as in Klaxon.
*
Edith sat in the Proustian arbour, holding the stalk of a flower pressed between the backs of her hands, the red bloom of involuted petals held at eye-level.
She posed for both painting and photograph, unsure as yet which of them would do her full justice. She held the angles of her body at their optimum level whilst masking the ugly birthmark on her forehead with the bloom.
The painter was standing by an easel at the far end of the inner garden, the long brush held aloft, his artistic thought processes apparently taking their time to percolate, and the palette upon his other arm mounted with wormcasts of corruptive colour, all chosen for Edith’s complexion.
Further over to the side, where the neatly manicured topiary began, there was a tall tripod bearing an instrument with a retractable snout and a black cape flowing from its rear and the legs of a man curved over from under the cape and a bulb to squeeze and a flash like lightning and...
Arthur, as a small boy, shut the pop-up book with a crack. He twiddled with his left ear absent-mindedly.
The front of the board covers was decorated with the only abstract image in the whole volume and, with the dying light of the nursery fire, he discerned a pattern more suitable for carpets than murals.
The book had been left with him as a peace offering by his parents who had departed in a horse-drawn carriage for an evening at the opera. He had heard the clatter of hooves disappearing into the echoey Klaxon distance, leaving him alone in the house—or worse than alone, since the only other person left behind under the same roof was the family’s ancient nanny. She sat in the corner by the fitful log fire, knitting-needles clicking, her asthmatic lungs rasping. He watched the sometimes insect-like, sometimes bird-like silhouette moving only very slightly in unfaithful rhythm to her deft stitching.