Bigot Hall

by Steve Aylett

  ‘And that my mother-in-law is made of metamorphic rock.’

  ‘That, with all due respect, is not my concern.’

  ‘Well answered.’ Father held out a hand. ‘And welcome aboard sir. I think you’ll find our little nation a fertile chaos of throbbing trash.’

  ‘Indeed sir,’ said the new arrival, with a firm and solemn handshake.

  An hour later, Snapper burst into the study. ‘Leap’s just told me you accepted a new lodger!’ He was startled and alarmed. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Strap-hanger. Plug-ugly. Armed to the nines. Ask no questions. Last resort.’

  ‘Is he suitable?’

  ‘I sat here blathering the worst sort of nonsense and he never clanged an eyelid. Shook my whole arm like a man of honour. He’ll be up in his room now, buggering a rayfish.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Snapper, shuffling and eager to begin, ‘I should go and give him the glad hand.’

  Father returned to his drawingboard. ‘See that you do.’

  Snapper entered Mandible’s room and Mandible, about to flip the catch on his travel case, did not smile. ‘Not interrupting anything,’ Snapper told him. ‘Thought I’d drop by to welcome you into the fold. You’ll find this a pleasant home if you keep your depravities to yourself. That hole over there is for the snake, so keep it clear. The corners of the house are all on the inside. Designed to leach your integrity as you sleep. Madness moves upon us with hardly the snapping of a twig.’ Snapper sat bouncing onto the bed, looking around. ‘This was my room before my brother - who incidentally likes to eat human flesh - told me to live in that treehouse out there.’ He regarded Mandible, awaiting a response. ‘So how do you make a living, Mandible?’

  ‘I’m in the brain trade.’

  Snapper stood and departed with a slam.

  In the study, Snapper slavered a substance resembling guacamole. ‘Said he was in the brain trade. The brain trade,’ he emphasised. ‘In god’s name make a remark to comfort me, brother.’

  ‘Perhaps he was lying.’

  ‘If that was the lie he selected what pit of hell could he be concealing? You’ve picked a spooky one there, brother. He’ll trundle in at night and suck out your supper with a pipe and bellows.’

  In the afternoon, Mr Mandible slowly entered the study to find Father alone at his desk. ‘I should like,’ he stated, ‘to take the opportunity to explain a certain remark at which your brother was perhaps disconcerted. Before matters become unnecessarily oppressive.’

  ‘Oppressive,’ said Father, cautiously.

  Mr Mandible sat down opposite the desk. ‘In the likelihood that you will implore my assistance shortly in the extermination of certain vermin, I have with me the instruments of my calling.’ He patted the shell-shaped leather case on his lap. ‘You see, what you perhaps blithely refer to, through the cigar smoke and laughter of after-dinner conversation, as the human brain, is not by nature an ingredient of the human organism. The brain is a parasitic sea-sponge, brimming and sinister, wielding our bodies like a crane.’

  ‘A parasite.’

  ‘You mock my trade by pretending otherwise. More things in heaven and earth sir.’

  ‘I should say so.’

  ‘And these particular things,’ stated Mandible, ‘exist at my expense - and yours. Who needs a forebrain?’

  ‘Ah - who indeed?’ said Father, gripping his chair as though in a runaway sidecar.

  ‘Insidious sir. Threading through the host tissue. Staked to the brainpan like a hiking tent. The man who realises all this will feel a strong urge to lance his own head like a boil. Resist sir. Or to cop it under a skidding lorry. Resist, resist. It is not impossible to lead a normal life.’

  ‘An interesting concept.’

  ‘Corruption sir. Pollution. How to discern between our thoughts and theirs? Do I slap my face - uh - by my own volition? It’s a sad day for one and all when a man can’t take credit for slapping his own profile. And all because of these bloody sea animals.’

  ‘How do these tiresome brains of yours move inland?’

  ‘Tortoises sir. Sold commercially. Thick protective shell, ideal cavity size, slow gait unlikely to jolt the cargo.’

  ‘A skullcase on legs eh?’ said Father thoughtfully, standing. ‘Pardon me a moment will you?’

  Father was in the driveway, frantically loading tortoises into the jeep. He pulled away in a spray of gravel as Mr Mandible ran out of the house, aiming a customised harpoon gun.

  Near the village, Father threw himself into a callbox and dialled, gasping. ‘Roger you bastard?’ he bellowed down the phone. ‘Mandible. Seemed normal. Tipped his hand. Madman. What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Me, old fellow?’ laughed Roger Lang affably, his voice crackling and distant. ‘He’s no friend of mine. Staggered out of an abattoir during demolition. Bothered me. Gave him your address.’

  ‘Well he’s fallen just short of invoking the devil.’

  ‘Not surprised, old man - coals to Newcastle.’

  ‘My reading of the situation is this – you’re a shithead who ought to be posted a burning rag. This extraordinary admission of yours to not even know the man makes everything crystal clear. He was barely in the door before launching into a dismal regatta of barbarity and fear. Insisted that tortoises contain brains.’

  ‘But ofcourse they do old fellow.’

  ‘Not that kind of brain you idiot. The kind that comes out of the sea and takes control.’

  Lang was feeble with laughter as Father dropped the receiver and bolted from the callbox - Mr Mandible was fast approaching on a bicycle. The car wouldn’t start - Father started sprinting across an adjoining field, holding a carpetbag.

  For reasons I refuse to understand, most of the villagers had come to believe that the Hall was an asylum. Seeing this as his trump card, Father entered the village police station and put the carpetbag on the counter. ‘This bag,’ he gasped. ‘Full of tortoises. See for yourself. Chap just escaped from the Hall. Irrational behaviour. Believes they’re related.’

  The officer on duty peered into the bag. ‘Perhaps they are,’ he said.

  ‘Not the tortoises you moron,’ shouted Father. ‘The facts.’

  The church bell began to ring and Father ran out to see that Mr Mandible was clinging to the steeple, yelling down at a gathering crowd. ‘Listen to me – don’t deceive yourselves,’ he was shrieking emphatically. ‘We’re prawns in their game - you don’t know what you’re up against. Only one life to lead and frankly you’ve made a balls of it. We’re heading for a catastrophe you fools - a cataclysm from which nothing fiercer than a chicken will step away. It’ll be as much fun as being sawn out of a Volvo and as interesting to watch as Walter Brennan. You’re in denial, the lot of you.’

  Gazing up, the police officer gave a scornful snort. ‘Not me,’ he said.

  ‘You soppy bastards,’ Mr Mandible was bellowing. ‘More noisy than efficient. Hamfisted and bleating. Mean-spirited. Imperilling everything. I draw no distinctions. You’ll end up as charcoal statues. Baked to perfection. Blown to bits. Revenge. One in the face for liberty. I’m incredible, stunning, unbelievable. And I’ve been that way for donkeys’ years.’

  The policeman raised a megaphone. ‘Had a bump on the old noggin eh Mandible?’

  ‘I’m past caring,’ yelled Mr Mandible. ‘I’ve the lion’s share. I’m laughing. Your lies are dense enough to fluoresce in UV light.’

  ‘As delirium goes,’ said an onlooker, ‘it’s classy.’

  ‘Makes it look so easy,’ said another.

  ‘Mutant in a belltower,’ said a third, wistful and misty-eyed.

  At that point it began to rain and the crowd dispersed. The officer left, saying ‘It’s all yours, doc’ to Father as he gave him the megaphone.

  ‘Er …’ said Father through a squeal of electrical feedback.

  Huge drops of rain were flying from Mandible’s face and hair. He sputtered and frowned, clinging to the steeple.

  ‘Er
… Mandible.’

  Mandible strained his face around. ‘What now?’

  ‘You may not be suited to the Hall after all.’

  ‘You … you said I could stay. There are the legal aspects to consider. A spoken agreement is technically binding.’

  ‘I … I know it is, Mandible, but … I feel I’ve been misled. This brain business, it won’t do - not when it involves harpooning tortoises and so on.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ shouted Mandible over his shoulder, slipping and clutching at the roof.

  ‘It’s a house rule, Mandible - one I felt didn’t need spelling out. My mistake old fellow, but there it is. No harpooning of anything smaller than a barn.’

  ‘And Mr Burst’s ego?’ said Mandible, his face pressed against the streaming tiles.

  ‘An exception - all egos an exception. Is it agreed?’

  ‘No turbot,’ shouted Mandible.

  ‘If you insist, old boy. Do we have an understanding?’

  Mandible scrabbled for a handhold. ‘Very well,’ he said, and slipped, crashing through the roof of a horsebox - a gelding burst through the doors and galloped away with a confused Mandible on its back. A week later he was found convulsing in a disused sty and by that time Father had organised a course of tablets - the same medication, incidentally, that Uncle Snap took for his anger. In order to keep track of the Hall tortoises, Mr Mandible devised a pair of heat-sensitive goggles which he wore twenty-four hours a day. And since tortoises are cold-blooded and undetectable by these means, the device was a comfort to Mandible even when one was crawling across his face.

  RISE

  Glad of the company of a gormless tyke to whom he could feed outrageous bullshit, poor Mr Cannon would spin me the same yarn every time he had a break from maximum security.

  ‘You’re descended from werewolves,’ he said, going at his leg irons with a bandsaw. ‘Why d’you think Uncle Snap’s forever howling at the moon?’

  ‘Because he’s a throwback and barking mad.’

  He eyed me with sharp good humour. ‘Why d’you say – “barking”?’

  I explained that if the lifespan of the world were a twenty-four hour clock, humans would appear at two seconds to midnight and Snapper would appear at teatime.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Cannon. ‘And aren’t you always saying he’s only just learnt to walk on his hind legs?’

  ‘It’s a metaphor, Cannon - something a strumpet like you wouldn’t understand. Don’t drill here, you moron - take it to the foundry.’

  ‘Think carefully, laughing boy – haven’t you an appetite? If it so much as moves you pour milk on and eat it.’

  ‘Out of sheer bloody desperation!’

  ‘No smoke without fire.’

  ‘You know very well there is - get out you bastard and take your ribboned premise with you.’

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he said, standing up with a smirk of mischief, ‘turn thirteen and you’ll know exactly what you are.’

  But after three years of being dripped such effervescent nonsense I no longer bothered to reject it. Amid the unnameable abjections of the Hall it made a refreshing change from the truth and was quietly absorbed into the charcoal of my flash-fried personality. I had always known the others were keeping some grand secret from me - Mister Hieronymus had said as much. Clearly I would start roaring at some point and undergo an agonising change, my bones thickening and creaking like the plot of Uncle Silas. I’d howl at the murky window and so on. I was glad to have something to look forward to.

  Fascinated by the idea, I lay at night believing that I sensed the onset of the transformation. Adrienne became worried that I no longer struggled against my chains. ‘It’s no fun when you’re like this, laughing boy. Won’t you pretend for me?’

  ‘These chains are the best idea you ever had, sis. Come my birthday, we’ll need them.’

  Adrienne pouted so that her mouth, regrettably, resembled the suction pad of an octopus.

  ‘The werewolf,’ she later read from a monster encyclopaedia, ‘can be killed by a silver bullet through the heart.’

  ‘So can I.’

  ‘There’s more. It’s covered in hair, eats sheep, sees in black and white and is easily enraged.’

  It became clear that we were dealing not with a mythical beast but a vapid adult male. I saw the slow-motion fire-bombing of my spirit. ‘Tighten the chains,’ I blurted. ‘It’s a bloke I’m turning into.’

  ‘That’s not terrible,’ said Adrienne scornfully.

  I told her to take a gander at the precedents. Uncle Snapper - nought to sixty in five hours. Roger Lang - oblivious to anyone but himself. Father.

  ‘What about him?’

  I slammed into Father’s study. ‘No hanging and shooting Uncle Snap this birthday, Father - I want answers. Why has poor Mr Cannon been telling me all these bloody years I’m due for the wolfhouse? I’ve been straining to endure an erupting musculoskeletal system because of his lies.’

  ‘He meant it kindly, lad - a distraction. Misguided ofcourse - you could park a ship in his madness. People make a meal out of a tedious transition. Truth of it is the meatheads you deplore were meatheads from the start. Snap, for instance, thundered antlered and snorting into his teens without a twang - just got louder, is all. Here’s a picture of him aged two.’ Father showed me a picture of a toddler at the handles of a Gatling gun. ‘Same goes for the ineffectual,’ he said, becoming balmy and philosophical. ‘Whatever the quality, it’s expressed to progressively exponential extremes. The power-hungry will inevitably run for leadership and the drab will support them - but you know this, laughing boy.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I frowned, picking up a clock from the mantel. In five minutes I would be thirteen. ‘But what’ll happen to someone like me?’

  Father’s face froze with fear, then seemed to crumple. ‘I could be wrong,’ he stammered. ‘Exceptions to everything under and over the sun …’

  I couldn’t watch his uncertainty. Returning to Adrienne’s room, I lay on the bed. ‘Tie me down,’ I said.

  HAZE

  ‘Remember a chap who played the petal-pulling game with the pin of a grenade. Got as far as “She loves me” and blew to pieces like a dandelion head. That’s the way to go, laughing boy.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house and some of us were examining a meal. The tree had thrown branches in all directions with a vigorous irregularity. Uncle Snap said he could shoot the cloth out from under the tableware. I had to stand up to laugh.

  ‘The Dodger there,’ muttered Snap to Father, nodding in my direction. ‘I can’t stand him.’

  This veiled utterance signalled the start of the morning argument. ‘Rattling your chains,’ rumbled Snapper, ‘untroubled by the snares of reality and expecting it all. You and your infantile aggrandisement have buried the rest of us in steaming bullshit.’

  ‘Beg pardon, Uncle?’ I asked, turning to him. ‘Miles away.’ A vein in his temple bulged like an inner tube. ‘Don’t look at me that way, Uncle - not without pupils.’

  Snap turned to Father. ‘The boy’s beyond everything,’ he said, voice shrill with incredulity. ‘Feed him poison and he’ll grow fat on it, laughing in your face!’

  ‘Fine words,’ I stated after a considered silence, ‘from a man who has a vestigial tail in the shape of a Cluedo character. Tell it to a court-appointed psychiatrist, Snapper. You contain enough hot air to fire a cob across a ten acre field.’

  I knew I was punching him in the head, an activity I have never been able to control - but my thoughts were elsewhere. I pondered the way a manta ray will filter plankton and small fish from water passing over its gill arches. There’s efficiency for you.

  My attention returned to Snapper. ‘That’s another time he’s punched me!’ he complained each time I punched him.

  ‘More in sorrow than in anger,’ I lied. I was so angry I could barely maintain my own accent.

  Bu
t I had forgotten the Duel Rule. As teenagers Father and Snap had argued. Father had set fire to the bill of his brother’s hat and shoved him through a plate glass window. To settle the rip they had a handgun duel which went wide. This tradition had been preserved like a tequila worm. At thirteen - an age I had never thought to see - I was ripe for the consequences of my belligerence.

  I’d done it now.

  As the day grew hotter my hopes of survival turned to mist. Leap was painting a starter mark on the lawn. ‘It’s about that time,’ said Mr Mandible, regarding his watch. ‘Thought I’d tell you before the appropriate moment’s past - your head, it looks like a spud.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ah, don’t thank me,’ he said and wandered off, cheerful and vague.

  Snapper climbed down from his treehouse dressed in combat gear and a ninja hood. Ignoring me, he began a preparatory breathing exercise.

  ‘Laughing boy,’ said Leap, startling me - I spun to face him. ‘A word in your bell-like. Your lethargy has wrought the havoc we are used to. Even the flowers have ceased functioning as a result of your leering hatred. You’ve contributed more than anyone to the hellish incineration of human understanding. I feel a raw bleeding wonder when I see you lacking expression from ear to ear. I’d split my own meat to know what you’re up to. Watch your back.’

  ‘Better get over there, laughing boy,’ said Father, striding up.

  ‘I seem not to have any choice in the matter,’ I said morosely.

  ‘The darkest hour’s just before the dawn.’

  ‘So are the majority of bed deaths, Father.’

  ‘You a man or a mouse?’

  ‘I appear to be allowed the understanding of the latter.’

  ‘Well your Mother, Nan, Adrienne and I, we’re all right behind you – isn’t that right -? Ah they’re talking to Snap. Well, off you go.’

  ‘Au revoir.’

  ‘Indeed - and the best of British luck to you.’

  ‘Then it’s goodbye.’

  I started across the heat-blurred lawn toward the sentry figures of Snap and the Verger. I felt as if I was walking to the circus and clung to the hope of a sudden, distracting haemorrhage. Everything felt obscenely real as I reached the starter mark. ‘Your damnation’s on the cards, laughing boy,’ stated the Verger, opening the gun box to reveal two machine pistols. Snap took his and slapped in a magazine, braying with laughter. My mouth was too dry to tell the Verger what I thought of him, my mind too ripped to think it. I took the other gun, which was as heavy as a crowbar, and pushed in a magazine uncertainly. The Verger placed the box aside. ‘Thirty paces and no pausing to poison the well - agreed?’