by Ashly Graham
One elderly woman said that, although she had never been up the downs to the ridge way along the top—owing to the lamentable condition of her knees—she had it on good authority that the vista had been ruined. This had caused her late husband, who was an avid walker until his fatal heart attack, to turn over in his grave; and her to be prescribed five milligrams three times a day of Valium by her doctor, supplemented by her own specific of half a litre of gin. To add insult to injury, the new porch obscured the prospect out of her kitchen window, from which she was accustomed to enjoying an uninterrupted view of goings-on in the Street, and seeing into the windows of the terrace of cottages that she owned opposite on which she religiously put the rent up every year and irreligiously refused to pay for essential repairs on.
As the Porch Lady sat fuming in Siberia, a woman who was a leader of the rubble-razing-and-dumping complaint movement leaned over the back of her chair and cluck-clucked her sympathy, expressing amazement that people could be crass enough to make a fuss about something so trivial. That this other woman, who was her neighbour, had recently also enraged the village by evicting a flock of exotic sheep that she had allowed a local breeder to graze in her own adjacent field, thereby saving her and all those who owned the coterminous pastures the trouble and expense of having them mowed, in order to clear it for her children’s soccer games (contrary to the field’s designation as being for agricultural use only) was there rather than here. Villagers were scrupulous about segregating their grievances for cataloguing purposes.
The tension was relieved as the man who had been unable to stand his round at the pub uncurled his spine. Some mention of the bridle-path had dispelled the fog in his brain and triggered a thought that he wanted to share with the assembly.
‘Sh...sly Drinkers’ Alley, dey used to call it, my gran-daddy told me. Mister Purty, ’e always went ’ome that way, dere was an ’and-rail along it then, you see, and he liked ’is liddle drop of ale of a Saturday night, ’e did, an’ ev’ry other night as well, an’ not so liddle neither. ’E were that monog’mous—hee—with the days of de wick, were Mister Purty, if not with ’is missus. Arm in arm ’e’d be with Mister Shteel, ’oo won the race to catch de shlippery pig, up de Devil’s Breach afore de bonfire was lit dat night, eighteen ninety-seven it were, for Queen Victoria’s Dimond Jubilee...in ’is socks, ’cause ’e ran better in the mud without ’is boots on, so ’e said.’
The councillors—who were wearing the stoical expressions of those unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of someone who had broken wind with prejudice—let him ramble on, on the presumption that he would be asleep again shortly and save them having to ask that he be ejected.
The bibulous individual continued. ‘Same year, dey ’ad a contest for Village Eejit. Five winners dere were, all tied for first place, nothin’ to tell between d’lot of ’em; stoopidest village in the county, we was, nowhere else ’ad more than four. An’ dey ’ad to divvy up first prize, didnay? of a dozen pork sausages and a gallon o’ beer...oh, de fight dat broke out, it were grand!’ The character seemed to pass out; then rallied as another thought loomed out of the brume. ‘Den dere were old granny what’s-’er-name, ’oo died just before ’er ’usband. Married sixty year, dey’d bin, and she was carried into ’is room where ’e lay dyin’ too. An’ ’e took a-hold of her nose, very big and veined an’ h-hairy it was, and said, “Goodbye, old gooseberry.” Dead ’isself a day later, sho shad.’ The man’s head drooped and he began snoring.
Interlude over, the DL heard of plans that had been approved, and denied; and of applications for retrospective planning permission, which was how one got to build something for which permission would not have been granted had one been foolish enough to submit the architect’s drawing beforehand, instead of filing the paperwork with the Council after the project had been surreptitiously completed, and getting it approved on the grounds that it would cause more disruption to dismantle than had already been suffered in its construction, and double up on the unsightly rubble that had already been removed. Although the retrospective planning permission subterfuge was deprecated in others, it was standard operating procedure when one needed to accomplish something for oneself, and more often than not the trick worked.
Also featuring prominently on the agenda were trees, especially protected ones, and those within the officially designated Conservation Area that the village was in, inside the officially designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that the Conservation Area was in, inside the officially designated National Park that the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty was in. The trees’ only alleged crime was that they were either blocking a view or impeding an approved prospective or undeclared prospective-retrospective construction project. People who had never given a damn about trees except the one that had fallen on their parked car, the car that had been shat on every night by the pigeons that roosted above, when those trees were threatened became instant arborists and tree-huggers and pigeon-fanciers and devotees of all creatures that nested and lived amongst bushy things that grew naturally without permission.
Until, that was, after the trees had mysteriously been cut down under cover of darkness, and after those trees had been eulogized with the Ciceronian eloquence that was customarily reserved for dead pets and written-off automobiles, these same people hastened to inquire of the mysteriously tree-purged party, now that the timber was no longer vertical and presumed dead, whether they might put their chainsaws to work on it and remove the logs for their fires—at no charge to the tree-purged party for the labour because the cost of having wood delivered these days was so iniquitous.
Flaunting its bigotry as proudly as a medal, the Parish Council’s Court of Star Chamber deliberated on a while longer about how best to hallow and venerate its rustic shrine, and preserve it for future generations, and prayed that its councillors’ successors in stewardship might be blessed with the nous to maintain it as conscientiously as they were.
The devil lady kept her promise to herself to sit quietly and not say anything, and slipped out shortly before the end. After a brisk moonlit walk back to the Old Rectory—she wanted to shed a few pounds and every calorie counted—she found that her manservant was not yet returned; so she sat in the drawing-room to await him, looking defiantly into the fire as she drank several nightcaps. When at last he poked his nose round the door, without asking if she needed anything, or allowing her to get in the stern words she had for him to the effect that he did not decide his own hours, he announced that he was turning in immediately and would see her in the morning.
His eyes were circling in opposite directions, and were it not for his Infernal constitution she would have sworn that he was squiffy.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Reverend Fletcher Dark asserted his prerogative to take Service at Ophelia’s church; and, it being the object of the exercise that it be his audience, and not he, go down in flames, on Saturday afternoon the devil lady summoned him to the Old Rectory to discuss the sermon he would be giving. When he arrived, the DL had just rung for the tea trolley, and he had to stand next to the table and watch as she dissected a smoked herring. It was a procedure that she insisted be conducted in silence, and she raised a stern hand when Dark, who was nervous, attempted to make polite conversation.
At length the devil lady pushed a pile of skin and bones to the edge of her plate, laid her knife and fork side by side on it, wiped her lips with her napkin and explained her mission—which was now also his, she reminded him—to the barely comprehending reverend. It was, in case he had not already gathered as much, to win over as many souls as possible to the infernal cause, by means foul or foul; so that, like mediaeval knights who yielded in battle, when in the fullness of time they presented themselves at the gates of Hell for their first hot yoga session instead of arriving at room temperature at The Other Place to keep an appointment to meet their Maker, they would declare the devil lady as the agent of their defeat and she would get credit for bringing them “home”.
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Many would be subverted easily, said the DL, once the spiritual cankers and diseases that Dark was to introduce amongst Ophelia’s soft following had spread. The DL warned Dark that the women would be the most difficult to reach, especially the middle-aged church ladies with bad hair, ravaged faces, and blancmange-like bodies. The stamina of these tweed-skirted and scuff-pumped reserves of cellulite to survive after their husbands had kicked the bucket, handed in their dinner-pails, popped their clogs, bought the farm, checked out, gone to the Great Beyond, et cetera, was considerable. It was those women, she said, for whom obsessive worship had become the vanishing-point of concentration for them as they turned to the only trustworthy masculinity left in their lives, the Church, who were the greatest prizes.
As she walked up the nave and took a seat in the front pew, or backed-bench—the original pews, of which there were no longer any at the church, were the gated seating reserved for those who paid rent for them—for Dark’s maiden performance, the devil lady noted that the congregation was larger than she had expected; what Dark might refer to as a density of devotees, targets for tarnation.
The DL was pleased: buying in bulk was so much easier than having to run around picking up a soul here and a soul there. Really, one might have to revise one’s opinion of churches, they were orchards of sin where every bough was laden with fruit ripe for a devil’s plucking; even on a day that, as she would soon become aware, Ophelia and Effie were absent. The pair had decided that, without telling anyone in order to avoid the risk of reducing attendance and inflaming an already smouldering fire of resentment, they would take the weekend off to visit a friend down the coast.
Although the sky was overcast and it was beginning to rain, Father Fletcher arrived sporting dark glasses that made his physiognomy even more repellent than usual. Judging from the bloody nicks and scraps of toilet paper on his face, and some bristly clumps of hair that the blunt disposable razor had failed to harvest, he had risen late. He had also slathered his chops with Aramis cologne, the potency of which caused some to clamp handkerchiefs to their noses. Even the DL was discomfited.
Dark gabbled his way through the service, leaving out the important bits, from an easy chair that he had brought during the week and placed in the chancel, until the dominant-seventh moment came for the sermon. Getting up he mounted the circular steps of the pulpit, surveyed the throng before him through obsidian lenses, and began speaking unnecessarily loudly in a brash Transatlantic accent.
‘Yo! cats, take a load off. Now!’ He noted with pleasure the startled looks on people’s faces as everyone, reacting to such an unorthodox exordium, went down like ninepins. The devil lady clutched her temples; this was not the opening that they had agreed upon. ‘And speaking of loads,’ the reverend continued, ‘this is the second time today that I’ve risen from a hot seat with a piece of paper in my hand, and I don’t mean at Matins. Getting up early is for the birds. The early bird is a verminous worm.
‘Now listen up, folks. The text, the pithy sentiments with which I intend to unwax your ears today, comes from the Book of Darkness, Chapter One. Actually the Book of Darkness only has one chapter, a short one, and it is a rebuttal of the ten commandments. Verily I say unto you, the ten commandments are a crock, yes, siree, Bob. Wanna know why? Sure you do, that’s why I’m up here and you’re down there.
‘So get this. Commandment number one: “I brought you out of the house of bondage.” Yeah, but we only nipped out for a cigarette, mate, it was no biggie, after our respective sessions when the chesty girl in the VIP lounge at the strip joint said we had to go outside to smoke.
‘Number two, no carved images. What say? You want me to clear out the ornaments in my living room, including dear deceased Auntie Flo’s plaster rendering of Mickey Mouse? Nuts to that.
‘Number three, no swearing. Why the hell not? Everyone needs to let off steam.
‘Number four, keep the sabbath. What’s a sabbath when it’s at home? OK, stay at home if you want. What I’m sayin’ is, if you can do fun stuff six days a week, why not seven? unless it’s so I get paid, in which case keep coming to church.
‘Number five, honour your mummy and your daddy. Why? He’s a jerk and she’s a cow, ’nuff said.
‘Number six, no murder. Yowser! If it’s a choice between being killed and killing, which is it to be? And last time I checked, war was legal. Is war murder or not? Get back to me on that one, buds.
‘Number seven, no adultery. That’s crazy, man. Variety is the spice of life. Monogamish, I’m hip to that.
‘Number eight, no stealing. “Steal: To take something without permission”. I say if there’s nobody around to ask, it’s up for grabs. Cowabunga!, dudes, it’s a free country. You dig?
‘Number nine, no bearing of false witness against your neighbour. Well, I’m a neighbour of my neighbours, and because I have good ears and a long lens on my camera, there’s nothing I can tell you about them that isn’t true. What my Nikon has seen ain’t Photoshopped. I’ll pass around some pics if you like.
‘Moving right along, numero ten. Number ten is my favourite: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour’s.” What are you guys gonna do with your free time if all those are no-nos? Go figure. Personally I fancy the neighbour’s wife…two-down more, three-down not so much…as for the male servants, let’s not go there, and the donkeys—heads up, there ain’t no more oxes around—but hey, y’all, I’m cool with whatever floats your boats, rings your bells.’
Gasps and angry murmurs issued from the audience after each of these pronouncements.
Dark continued, ‘Actually, I can’t lay claim to being the originator of what I have just told you, I don’t mind admitting it, pals, but I can assure you of its authenticity. It is a précis of… matter on an ancient papyrus scroll that I was fated to discover while I was on an archaeological dig in the Middle East, in an area that was once home to the ancient Essene sect.
‘Now, there are some pseudo-scholars who might be of the opinion that the source of the Essene precepts I have just paraphrased for your benefit is spurious. So bite me! For the dummies amongst you, “spurious” means “not genuine”, a load of old cobblers. But I tell yah, ladies and gents, those so-called scholars, those Doubting Thomases, are mighty jealous of my being guided to that Essene jumbo pack of toilet rolls. I mean papyrus scrolls, not the stuff I’m always running out of in the privy. Thank god for the Church News. Actually, and it seems funny now, I nearly used the papyrus scroll for the same purpose, after I found it and more in a box in the Mediterranean cave where I was caught short after finding a six-foot poisonous snake sharing my sleeping bag. I could have brought you more rolls of Essene papyrus if the parchment hadn’t been too contam...damaged for even a coprophiliac to decipher. But what I found surely conveys enough of the Sect’s message to be meaningful, and the rest is easily excrap…extrapolated.
‘The Essene writings I happened upon are proof of the bogus nature of latter-day religious culture. The sort of stuff that is spewed forth by priests, especially female ones, who waste our Sunday mornings doling out balderdash and tripe that you would be as well advised to reject as a week-old turkey and mayonnaise sandwich. The kind of rubbish that the Victorian John Ruskin describes, in his book Modern Painters, as “pathetic fallacies”…“pathetic” in its earlier sense of pathetic. Read the book and weep, O ye people. I haven’t and did not. These fallacies, says the Rusk-man in Coles Notes, represent a falseness in our, meaning your, impressions of external things, and are characteristic of minds and bodies that are “too weak to deal with what is before them.” Amen to that.
‘But why am I bothering to cast these pearls of Essene wisdom, these Essene Essentials, before swine like you? Why am I wasting my breath preaching parables on such exalted topics to a bunch of pussies and wimps? My bad. Why do you come to church at all? What
profits it a man to…well, that says it all, doesn’t it?, there is no profit in it. It is a profitless exercise. I’ll tell you what your problem is. Your problem is that you’ve been here so long as to have become indistinguishable in thought, word and deed from the sheep on the downs. Those of you dorks and doofuses who are not sheep are rabbits. Rustic rodents rambunctiously running rampant. Your men’s dicks have been docked like lambs’ tails. Dick-dock. Instead of chutzpah, huevos and horseradish they have hernias and haemorrhoids.
‘Shift the shit with a shovel. Jiminy! The heavenly Gemini are a Yemeni’s enemy. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, by old Fletch Dark. Sandbag the suckers senseless. Fight Ophelia fiercely.
‘Lastly, I am authorized to tell you putzes all parochial committees, both secular and religious, are dissolved. There! Done deal. Just think how much of your time that’s going to free up, how many more hours you’ll have to chill in the pub. Awesome!
‘OK, bro’, you’re done stylin’, time to dial it down. Quit while you’re ahead, bucko, no need to treat ’em to the whole Megillah. So that’s all folks, sermon’s over, you’re good to go. Ego te absolvo and all that happy horseshit. There’s coffee, tea, and cake at the back. Save me a Danish pastry, someone.’
The congregation was already moving to the back of the church as the minister of sinister stepped down from the pulpit.
A doughnut dropped by a toddler rolled into the gangway, and a fat boy, who resembled “Frank Richards”’ Billy Bunter as drawn by C.H. Chapman, hurried forward to pick it up. After biting out a chunk and looking at the remainder with disappointment, for it was a stale leftover from Effie’s last production, he hurled it with the velocity and accuracy of a demon bowler in the Hades first eleven cricket team.
