Hairy London

by Stephen Palmer

  “What do you mean by union?” asked Franclin.

  “Well, I mean love. Our need for communication and our need for union are similar in the sense that they draw people together through society. But union has a more profound quality. Communication between people is an aspect of living, though it can in some cases be deep, as is the case, demonstrated by Mrs Wetherbee, with emotion. But union does not have any aspect of chance. We do not live, as it were, casually creating union with others. Union has a different meaning. Union relates, as Marx pointed out, to the actual experience of the human condition, to the experience of living a human life. Union is the exchange of the experience of life, whereas communication is the exchange of information relating to life.”

  “Did you just say Marx?” Lord Blackanore asked.

  “I did say Marx,” Velvene replied. “But allow me to continue before you express your righteous shock, Blackanore, eh? As I was saying, union, by which I mean love, is the experience of understanding others. Union indeed is an inevitable part of life, because we simply have to understand others.”

  “Love is inevitable, then?” Franclin asked.

  “We are born,” Velvene replied, “without any knowledge of the world, and so we have to create our memories by learning about life. At least, most psychonauts think so, Mr Jung being the notable exception, eh? Love, therefore, was an inevitable consequence of our evolution from apes.”

  “What then is your wager presentation?” Lord Blackanore asked.

  Velvene turned to face him. “The purpose of love, Blackanore, is to facilitate the appearance of other human beings in our minds. It is our method of bringing other people, wholly independent of the self as I have explained, into our minds, to be understood. The experience of love is the experience of union. Indeed sir, loneliness is unbearable precisely because true understanding of the self and of life is inextricably bound up with the true understanding of others.”

  “I do not follow.”

  Velvene nodded. “I know you do not follow, because I know what you are really like, Blackanore. Love is indeed a paradoxical experience, eh? It preserves the integrity and independence of those involved. Love requires freedom to exist, for without freedom, Blackanore, why then it would be but a tie of necessity, eh? Love and freedom and understanding are therefore conceptual equivalents. Now do you follow?”

  “No! And I believe I never will.”

  “I also believe that,” Velvene said with a sigh. “You see, love is not blind, Blackanore. In fact it is the very opposite, eh? Love gives us an improved experience of others, since it is the very experience of the truth of these others, not just the perception of some surface quality.”

  He paused. There was nothing more to say.

  “Are you done?” asked Lord Blackanore.

  “I am done. And you are done too, eh? Because you do not love the workers you exploit in your terrible factories.”

  “My what?”

  Velvene rounded upon the man. “Did you not wonder who raided your factory in Grafton Place, eh?”

  Lord Blackanore leaped to his feet, glancing in consternation at the others. “What do you mean, Orchardtide?”

  Velvene laughed. “Well, Black-á-Nor Developments I suppose, which is private property, and where there is no admittance, at least to ordinary folk.”

  “You? You, Orchardtide?”

  “I was the one who chased you on your flying fox to London Zoo. I was the one. And I was the one who saw you poison Pertrand Urricane stone dead with a miniature krait. You are a murderer, Blackanore. Yes, it is true what you think about me – I have made the most radical breakthrough of all of us tonight. I am a Marxist! I reject utterly the aristocracy. I have seen your factory Blackanore, and I have seen with my own eyes how you exploit your own kind, like the foul tyrant you are.”

  “Lies!” Lord Blackanore cried. “Gentlemen, this is all lies!”

  Velvene drew deep breath to shout over the gathering clamour, as every member of the club jumped to his feet; Eastachia Wetherbee too, shock plain on her face. He yelled, “Quiet, all of you! There will be time enough to investigate the methods and properties of Blackanore, eh? I claim the wager monies! I claim them, for I am correct! And so is Marx!”

  Lord Blackanore stood on a chair and also yelled. “I am now the Treasurer of the Suicide Club! I say this to you all – there is no winner! None of you have proven your case. And so the money stays with me – and let that be an end to this wretched club, for ever and ever!”

  With that, he uttered a spine chilling scream and sprang for the door of the dining room. And he was never seen again.

  EPILOGUE

  Velvene walked on his own down Chancery Lane, eastward along Fleet Street, then south along New Bridge Street to Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames looked different indeed.

  From end to end as far as he could see it was choked with hair that had washed down from north and south, along storm drains where they were not choked, down alleys, gutters, and along roads and passages, so that a thick layer covered the water. Upon this layer of hair the people of London Town had set up a fair. The Hair Fair, it was called.

  Hands in pockets, Velvene strolled along Blackfriars Pier, then stepped from a jetty onto the softly rolling surface. It was safe, he realised; a thousand people or more laughed upon the river, enjoying themselves without a care, children and dogs running this way and that; and there were hundreds of stalls to see.

  Velvene bought himself a toffee pear, played a few games of shove-a-spong, and threw coconuts at badly manufactured toy heads featuring, amongst others, the visage of the Prime Minister and all of the Cabinet.

  Velvene laughed to himself. He knew now that he had come through an experience that had made him an adult. His mother had beaten him down instead of encouraging him to grow. She had not loved him. His father too had not loved him. And because of that lack of love, Velvene knew, he thought little of himself. But the truth, it appeared, was different. He was a good man. A man far from perfect, it was true, but a man who at the very least could say he knew what direction to grow in.

  “Spong for your thoughts,” said a voice to his side.

  He glanced over to see a young woman not three yards away, walking in his direction. She was slender, dark haired, with brown eyes; pretty, he decided, with a pleasant, if somewhat crooked, smile.

  “For my thoughts, eh?” he replied.

  She approached him. “You seemed very far away,” she said, “if that look in your eyes was anything to go by.”

  He smiled. He liked her insouciance. “I am Velvene Orchardtide,” he said. “What is your name?”

  “Nina Novemberist,” she said. “You are a forward gentleman, aren’t you? Asking a girl her name so swift. Shall we walk down the Fair, you and me? I’ll let you buy me a toffee apple.”

  “Well, actually they are toffee pears,” he said.

  “Not the ones down there. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He did as he was bid, following her. “Toffee apples, eh?” he said with a grin. “And are there toffee damsons also?”

  Nina laughed. “Of course! And toffee greengages.”

  “A toffee greengage, eh? Never! You are joshing me.”

  “I’d never do that. Why, I do declare I had a toffee sprout just now…”

  About the Author

  Stephen Palmer is the author of eight published SF novels – Memory Seed, Glass, Flowercrash, Muezzinland, Hallucinating, Urbis Morpheos, The Rat & The Serpent (originally published under the name Bryn Llewellyn), and Hairy London. His short fiction has been published by NewCon Press, Solaris, Wildside Press, SF Spectrum, Eibonvale Press, Unspoken Water and Rocket Science.

  Ebook editions of all eight novels are available, most of them from infinity plus. He lives and works in Shropshire, UK.

 

 

  rchive.