One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (9 page)

And it was still in this highly enraged state of mind that ye Bard remained when a couple of us first noticed the extremely tall, good-looking couple sheltering in our doorway from a brief hilltop squall. Both over six-feet-tall and displaying fearsomely upright posture, the two had the look of foreign royalty, probably Scandinavian aristocracy from the extravagant manner in which these two blondies were kitted out. Out of place or what! She was about forty, effortlessly beautiful and clad head-to-toe in immaculate white outdoor gear, over which her Gore-Tex coat, also white, stretched fully to the ground. He on the other hand was a mid-20s shocker, got up in a dreadful red-white-and-blue skiing outfit, big white panoramic Buggles shades and the most Canadian boots this side of Bigfoot. Foreigners of great exotic provenance, obviously. But from where on earth? In the café, meals were prepared and eaten, diners came and left, but still the two exotics hovered in our doorway, Video Killed The Radio Stars occasionally peering in. Until, at long last, this extravagantly dressed Olympic skier, this Prince of Zermatt, this Captain of the Cresta Run or whoever he was when he was at home, gingerly pushed open the café door then strode gallantly over to Buriel at the till.

The be-Buggled stranger now safe atop the crapper, the D-Cough lit up immediately with questions and flummoxed asides. What accent’s that? Was that Quickborn badge on his anorak a religious symbol? Could they both be Northern Irish? And all the while, we artists, poets and creative scenesters craned our necks to view more clearly the beautiful white Goddess without, whose near-queenly outdoor attire, unwavering posture and economy of movement held us all constantly in her thrall. Mick meanwhile, until recently mixing up the magic over in Poet’s Corner, had clearly had his curiosity piqued by the stranger, for he had by now cast down his pencil, picked up an ice-cold Kola Bear and drifted down to that black-and-white checked hinterland twixt punter and till, that treacherous food highway across which all meals must travel. And there Mick lingered, all fizzed up and ready to People Watch right in the face of this beguiling outsider.

Now the iffy plumbing round at the D-Cough was its weakest attribute by far, and the lavatories throbbed whenever a flush was unleashed, letting off a long chain reaction right down in the kitchen taps. But simply by having presented us all with such beautifully clean and well-painted washrooms, the bountiful Memorial and Buriel daily captured the hearts of their fascinated clientele. Therefore, when our stranger re-emerged from his toilet sans
Buggles shades, his eloquent thanks and high praise for the sisters’ levels of hygiene started us all up into a curious conversation.

And with that, the be-ski-suited two-metre ‘hunk’, as Buriel would thereafter always refer to him, hurried outside to loiter again for another ten uncomfortable doorway minutes with his extremely lovely mother. Going nowhere. This couple was clearly going nowhere. Anyway, before we could work out an appropriate manner in which to invite our divine mother-and-son into temporary shelter chez D-Cough, the divine duchess suddenly popped a quick kiss on her son’s snowy white cheek, and dashed across the road into the antiques shop. Immediately back through the door strode our returning stranger.

Now Memorial, it must be established, right about that time in Spring ’89, cooked the best Full English Breakfast this side of the Channel – and that’s not just because I was living at her place and making gorgeous Moravian love to her every day. Oh dear me no. Her poached eggs cooked in a small, deep frying pan were unsurpassable. Her rough Polish hash browns with sour cream and apple sauce blew my mind. And her two-tier bubble-and-squeak with both crunchy and floppy cabbage was considered a separate meal in itself by my closest associates. So it was entirely to her credit that Memorial, on hearing this curious quasi-English conversation wafting across from the till, put off her apron, picked up her pencil and strode purposefully over to discover what specifically this otherworldly stranger believed – at least from his own worldview – to constitute a Full English Breakfast?

By now, both of the beautiful Czywczynsky sisters were mouth agape at the till, whilst the perma-grinning Gary Have-a-laugh lolled over the far end of the front counter at a quite ridiculous angle, determined to catch this Cultural Event from a newsworthy enough perspective. Was this all just horseshit that was being spoken to them? The Decoffinated Café’s clientele were silent, hanging on every word of this riveting exchange, as Mick, Stu and the rest of us clued in to this lovely being so similar and yet so totally alien to us all.

But the stranger’s fascinating words had stirred up in us such a Cultural hornet’s nest that Messrs Stuart and Have-a-laugh had already toddled off to the organic butcher’s, where they had retrieved more than enough high-class kidneys to satisfy
our downhill slalom champion. And though their return had co incided with that of Serge the Chauffeur, such was the D-Cough excitement that the Stranger enjoyed applause every time he tucked into ‘What Was On Offer’, whilst Buriel fixed him up a little Devilled Travel Kidneys for the hard road back to Anglo-England.

And with that, the stranger scooped Buriel into his arms, hugged her generously, saluted us all hilariously and – with a huge grin – declared that he
would
return. Then he handed Mick his business card, retrieved it again immediately, scribbled down ‘my cellphone number’ then stood about looking for excuses not to leave … until his exasperated mother finally pushed the door open and hissed
extremely
pleasantly.

The two of them beamed at us from the open café door, then took off in their huge Mercedes estate. I immediately hotfooted it over to where Mick was clutching the stranger’s business card, now surrounded by the entire D-Cough clientele. Of the stranger’s occupation his card gave no clue. The stranger’s name, however, could not disappoint and summed up entirely our previous hour’s performance. Mick held up the card and read aloud.

Thus – with the final inclusion of this curiously beautiful nobleman – was our little gangster gang complete. Thereafter known to our adversaries only by his calorific
nom de guerre
, Leander at football matches became our hooligan lawman, at Mick’s behest laying out the English lower classes for saying ‘toilet’ instead of ‘loo’, overturning foreign sidewalk cafés that dared to lay their tables with cutlery above the plate, and kicking a gendarme for asking ‘Pardon?’ rather than the correct posh equivalent ‘What?’
Oh, and once even laying out a drunken St. Etienne supporter who’d attempted to pass him port from the right. Bad show, Old Bean (bang!). And in that righteous honeymoon period of Spring ’89 – spent in café summit meetings and bathed in the gorgeous nurturing glow of the Czywczynsky sisters – our troupe, nay, our troop had coalesced briefly into a genuine Cultural Force. So we had.

Now, from my bed at Su Talleri, as I grasped and flailed in the early morning Sardu light, desperate to keep a grip on this swift-disappearing memory, I instinctively reached out for Memorial’s pneumatic form, yearning for her Moravian love so generously bestowed upon me and for so long. But even Memorial had, like so many other lovers, slipped my bonds too too many years ago. And in exhaustion and grief for the sheer weirdness of this earthly life, my naked Ur-self seized its 7am opportunity to shake free of its fetters, and dived headlong over the side of reality into a sweet, cool pool of dreams. Sleep at last. Sleep at last. Sleep at last. Down and down to the Ocean Floor of Consciousness sank my snoring Ur-self where it could be left alone to be, simply to be. Where nothing but nothing would bother me …