***
Mrs Povey pounced on the conclusion like a cat on to a thread of wool. ‘His only son, eh? Died in the trenches? Unmarried? No children?’ MCC shrugged. ‘Your family tree seems to have died in 1917, then, Mr Berkshire! How extraordinary!’
‘I didn’t say it was my personal history,’ said MCC with one of his dazzling, momentary smiles.
Mrs Povey sighed. Her voice, when she spoke again, was weary and harrassed. ‘So. Taking your story to heart, I am supposed just to sit back and let Ailsa … form an attachment for you.’
‘Why not?’ said MCC, slipping the toy soldier back into his breast pocket.
Mrs Povey sat forward in her chair and looked him squarely in his huge brown eyes. ‘Frankly, Mr Berkshire, because you don’t …’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BED:
A STORY OF HORRORS UNSPEAKABLE
Her sentence was never finished.
As dark as the void of Space, MCC’s extraordinary eyes, in flight from Mrs Povey’s, glanced up the stairwell and caught sight of Ailsa curled up behind the banister.
‘Go to bed, Ailsa,’ he said, and Mrs Povey swivelled angrily in her chair.
‘Go to bed, Ailsa.’
Ailsa withdrew. Below her, after a scurry of cleared coffee-cups, the clicking of light switches, the creak of stairs and the rattle of the great brass bed in the shop, the house settled into silence but for the ticking of the handless clock and the clicking of the basketware chairs.
Next morning, MCC was up and about early. He borrowed a coat that had once belonged to Mr Povey and went to the laundrette to wash his clothes. It was a bright spring day - the last day of April - and he came back sparkling white, his jacket hooked on one finger over his shoulder.
Mrs Povey had washed his clothes often, overnight, but never before had the grass stains entirely disappeared from his knees or his shirt dazzled so pavilion-white. To Ailsa he looked like a white-sailed yacht heeling out of a sunlit wave, black pennants flying and the green ensign limp. But then she had formed a very great attachment for him. For in such matters it makes very little difference ultimately what mothers do or say. She ran to the door and hugged him, to make that much plain to everyone.
But MCC held her at arm’s length and looked at her strangely - much as Mrs Povey held a letter when she had not got her reading glasses on. ‘I’ve decided!’ he said. ‘Today I shall make a sale!’
‘And what kind of story will you tell?’ asked Ailsa, feeling the empty pockets of his jacket to see which book he was currently reading.
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ He went and stood in front of the bookshelves and read the shelves from left to right, left to right, ceiling to floor. ‘What shall it be? Science fiction? No, I loathe science fiction - all pseudo-scientific jargon and airlocks. A spy thriller? No, I’m not intelligent enough for a spy thriller. A Western? No, not for Americans.’
‘How do you know they’ll be Americans?’ said Mrs Povey sharply, but he did not seem to hear.
‘Ah yes! A Gothic horror story. That should do nicely.’ He pulled a book from the shelf and, falling backwards languidly on to the chaise longue, he opened it at page one.
At about half-past eleven, an American couple came into the shop - tourists making a coach trip round the Southern Counties. They owned a shop themselves; it sold old copies of Superman, Dracula, and Marvel comics, just off the Chicago freeway. ‘You got old magazines, ma’am?’ asked the lady.
‘Sorry, no. Only books,’ said Mrs Povey.
‘They got no magazines, Virgil.’
‘Told you they don’t, these joints,’ said Virgil.
‘They got some nice old stuff, Virgil.’
‘They do? They got souvenirs, maybe, for the folks back home?’
‘You got souvenirs, maybe, for the folks stateside?’
‘Well not souvenirs, exactly,’ Mrs Povey apologized.
‘They don’t got souvenirs, Virgil.’
‘Sure they got souvenirs, Lindy-Ann. This stuffs English, ain’t it? Tell us what’s real English here, fella?’ Virgil was addressing MCC who, as he stood up, looked like the Captain of the English test side going in to field. When MCC spoke, his voice would have raised on tiptoe every blade of grass on the playing fields of Eton, or lifted from the water every dipped oar at Henley Royal Regatta. If he could have done, Virgil would have bought MCC then and there and shipped him home in a crate.
‘Everything here is English, sir - this clock, this chair, this table, this whatnot, this tallboy, this firescreen - in fact everything you see here is English … except the bed … except the bed, except the bed!’ And he grasped the brass footrail in both fists, as if the bed might suddenly break free and career away down the high street. ‘Except the bed!’
‘What’s with the bed?’ said Virgil.
‘Don’t ask, sir.’
Virgil was putty in his hands. ‘What’s with the bed, fella?’
‘The story’s too terrible to tell … too extraordinary, really … Too bloodcurdling, anyway.’
‘Oh Virgil! He says it’s bloodcurdling! Make him tell, honey!’ cried Lindy-Ann.
‘But it’s your bed, MCC!’ whispered Ailsa, tugging on his sleeve. ‘Where will you sleep?’
‘Make with the story, brother,’ said Virgil. ‘Make with the story.’
***
Lightning, like a black-cloaked magician, sawed the night sky in half. It cast a white and sickly glare over the moated grange of Bäddeschløss and set the hounds barking at the utmost tether of their chains. Their slavering jaws chewed at the dank mist which swirled up off the foetid moat, dulling the distant noise of hammering. Fowlstrangler was doing a little carpentry in the basement.
A yellow beam of light from the scullery door shone down the worn stone steps and lit his work - until into that light stepped a figure whose shadow loomed long, thin and black across the hunched manservant.
‘Fowlstrangler! I rang and you did not come!’
The squat creature in the basement let his hammer drop and crammed a plait of his long, matted hair into his mouth in craven terror. ‘Beg your lordship’s pardon, but the cord must’ve broke what joins the bellpull to the bell.’
‘I see it there in your hand, Fowlstrangler. Don’t lie to me. What are you doing with it?’
‘Building a rack, if it please your lordship.’
‘A wine rack, Fowlstrangler?’
‘No, milord, a rack of the more tormenting and tortuous kind, milord, if it please you!’
The Baron Greefenbludd plucked a shred of cobweb from above the cellar door and ate it thoughtfully. ‘It does please me, Fowlstrangler, but I have other things for you to do tonight.’
Astonished at his master’s affable mood, the manservant galloped up the steps as fast as his crutch would allow him. ‘What is your lordship’s pleasure?’
‘Ah! My pleasure, yes! The time has come,’ declared the Baron, grandly throwing open the doors on to the great hall, carpetless but for the cured skins of eight or nine wildebeest. ‘The time has come for me to take a bride, Fowlstrangler.’
‘A bride, milord? Of the female, womanish kind, you mean, milord?’
‘The very sort, and none more so than the bride I have in mind. Too long has Bäddeschløss been empty of the tender delights of a woman’s touch. Too long has it lacked the quiet screaming of little children. Now my eye has chanced upon the ideal bride: Amelia, daughter of the kindly Reverend Lovegood Divine, presently staying at a window-boxed inn in the peaceful tranquillity of a neighbouring valley.’
Baron Greefenbludd wiped soot off the inner recesses of the big fireplace and licked his fingers pensively. ‘Prepare a wedding feast, and put sheets on the great bridal bed, Fowlstrangler, then fetch her to me. I have a mind to view her before the ceremony.’
‘Very good, milord … Might I enquire whether the young lady will be expecting me to call?’
A twitch of irritation crossed the Baron’s face. ‘It’s true that
just at present she is unaware of the honour awaiting her - unaware of the favourable impression she has made on my eye. But if she has any misgivings, I can very soon persuade her to a liking for me,’ and he twisted the fire irons together between his hands as though he were plaiting straw. ‘Just bring her to me!’ The Baron gave a gesture of impatience which sent Fowlstrangler scurrying through the concealed door and up the spiral stairway to the East Tower of Bäddeschløss Grange.
He drove thirteen cats off the great bridal bed with his crutch and, deciding that the comfort of feathers only encouraged them, stuffed the goosedown mattress out through the arrow-slit window and into the moat below. He then spread hand-woven sheets of silk over the bedsprings, and evicted the rats from under the pillows. Lastly he knotted four solid chains to the four corner-posts of the bed, pulled a large carpet-bag from under the bed, and hopped and tapped his way down the back stairs to the stables.
Wolves howled among the Baron’s brick ovens which loomed like petrified haystacks out of the darkened fields. The moon sickened and declined into the arms of a leafless tree. The rocky mountain pass rang hard under the horse’s buckled shoes, as Fowlstrangler rode at full tilt, and the icicles tinkled dully and the caverns gaped, full of bear to right and left. The mountains scowled on Fowlstrangler.
But an hour later, he broke through the cage of moonbeams on his way back, the carpet-bag held in his teeth. Tapering screams followed the horse like steam curling around behind a locomotive.
Impatient for his bride, Greefenbludd paced the bedroom, irritably snapping candles out of their candle-sticks and eating the wax, like sugar mice, off their tails of wick. At last, the sound of hoofbeats sent him striding to the window. But an unaccustomed shyness drove him to lurk on the windowsill, wrapped in the curtain.
His manservant threw open the door and entered, a bow wave of snow across his chest, and heaved the carpet-bag off his shoulder and on to the bridal bed. The clasps snapped undone and a hand white as milk reached through the opening with pleading fingers. Fowl-strangler drew the woman out by her hair and was just chaining her to the bedstead when Baron Greefenbludd leapt out impatiently with an ‘Aha!’ which startled the rooks off the picture rail.
The lady’s struggles had thrown her long hair across her face, and the Baron, picking her up by the lacings of her bodice, drew back the hair like curtains.
‘Uh? … You fool, Fowlstrangler!’ he cried. ‘This is the wrong girl! This is Evelyn, the beautiful but big-nosed sister of the lovely Amelia Divine. You have brought me the wrong woman, dolt! There is no lack of noses at Bäddeschløss Grange. Noses run in the Greefenbludd family! Take her away!’
Fowlstrangler, one arm folded over his head against the blows, babbled his apologies: ‘Such a dark night, your lordship! And these eyes of mine don’t see so very well by candlelight. I climbed in at the window and saw a person working at her embroidery and all this hair …’ And he let the hair trickle through his fingers, absent-mindedly. ‘She won’t do, then, Master?’
‘Take her away and feed her to the sturgeon in the moat!’ cried Greefenbludd bitterly. ‘Then go back and fetch me the right one.’
Fowlstrangler bit his lip. ‘Begging your forgiveness, Master, but if you recall, the sturgeon died - of eating the rowing boat. Another ain’t to be had for love nor money!’
The Baron stove in the wardrobe with a single kick of his boot. ‘Then set her to work polishing skulls in the family vault. But be quick! I’ll not be kept waiting for my future bride!’
With a large sack over his shoulder and an ice-pick and whip in one hand, Fowlstrangler drove the Baron’s lightless black carriage back through the Bäddeschløss Pass, through the glowering night and downpour of dark, syrupy rain. The eyes of wild boar glimmered red between the trees, and mudslides slid like reptiles out across the road. Black crêpe cracked itself to tatters behind Fowlstrangler’s hat, and black plumes wagged frenziedly above the horse’s heads as he whipped them on to greater and greater speed.
An hour later, he returned, the iron-bound wheels striking sparks from the cobbled stableyard of Bäddeschløss Grange as the carriage slewed to a halt. Hurling a brick at the hounds chained beside the door, he bounded lamely up the stairs of the East Tower. The rain streamed off his clothing and down the stone spiral steps behind him, like a waterfall.
The sack across his shoulders bulged and tore, and desperate fingers poked through, and two eyes showed round with fear. The first sight they met was the master of the house squatting on the hearthrug nervously eating coal out of the grate.
Tossing the sack on the bed, Fowlstrangler ripped it asunder with a triumphant flourish. ‘Your bride, milord!’
‘Idiot! Fool! Bungler! What’s this? This is the kindly Reverend Lovegood Divine, father of the adored Amelia! What’s the matter with you, Fowlstrangler? I burn with impatience and you bring me this!’ And he picked up his man-servant by the head and threw him against the wall. ‘Feed him to the vampire bats, then fetch me the bride of my desire!’
Fowlstrangler sheltered under a table and wailed, ‘Forgive me! The inn was all in darkness! Everyone had gone to bed, Master! I listened at each bedroom door, but these ears of mine can’t judge so well between the breathing of a man and the breathing of a woman … And begging your pardon, milord, but the vampire bats are off their feed again.’
‘So set him to digging graves! Then fetch me the lovely Amelia — and hurry! Don’t try my patience too far!’
So Fowlstrangler returned to the stables and harnessed the sleigh. Its runners scored sharp grooves across the cobbles of Bäddeschløss Grange with a noise like a cut-throat razor. Rain, hail, snow and grit stood in wind-twirled columns along the roadside, but nothing could halt Fowlstrangler in his determination to do the bidding of his master. Though avalanches fell from the angry peaks until the horses struggled and swam chest-deep through rubble and snow, he finally reached the inn, pretty with window-boxes, sheltering in the peaceful neighbouring valley.
He hacked through the wooden props which shored up the inn on the mountainside, and saw it tumble down, all planks and splinters … ‘Rats!’ he said, when it fell on top of his sleigh.
So it was almost dawn before Fowlstrangler, on foot, reached Bäddeschløss Grange again, a padlocked chest on his back and his crutch worn down to a mere twig. He found his lord and master on the borders of the estate: his eagerness had brought him out in his shirtsleeves to gobble sheep’s wool off the barbed wire. He gambolled eagerly alongside his servant, pawing the lid of the chest with eager hands. They strained, shoulder-to-shoulder, through the door of the East Tower. They bounded up the spiral stairs, Greefen-bludd treading on Fowlstrangler’s fingers. The chest was thrown down on the bridal bed, where the Baron impatiently dismantled it by rending out each iron nail with his teeth. ‘At last! At last! Let me lay eyes and hands on my long-awaited . . . Fowlstrangler!’
‘Is there something, milord?’
‘Fowlstrangler, you loon! You booby! You dolt! You jobbernowl blunderhead! Tell me before I die in ignorance - where is the lovely Amelia and why have you brought me a window-box?’ And he picked up his manservant and pushed him out through the arrow-slit window.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Fowlstrangler, ‘but this poor brain of mine can’t judge so well between a lady and a window-box.’ As the Baron prised loose his fingers and dropped him all the beetling height of the tower into the moat, his words dwindled down to a wet full stop: ‘Them’s both quite
pretty
your
lordship!’
Sobbing with frustration and pique, the Baron Greefenbludd hurled himself on to the bridal bed - and was greatly disconcerted, not to say bruised, to find bedsprings where he had fully expected a goosedown mattress. Somehow his left arm became inextricably tangled in a spring. He gnashed his teeth on the flowers that dropped from the kidnapped window-box. After the night’s excitement, he was quite worn out, and Greefenbludd fell fast asleep, hugging to his che
st the window-box, watered with tears.
A pair of gallant and uniformed officers happened at dawn upon the wreckage of an inn in a peaceful and sheltered valley near their barracks. On the ruins stood a young woman of extraordinary loveliness, waving a handkerchief to summon help. They also managed to pull from the ruins the innkeeper and an assortment of shivering guests.
The whole sorry story was told. Miss Amelia Divine reported how she had seen a hideous, dwarf-like creature sawing through the props supporting the inn, and afterwards had seen him stealing away towards the mountain pass with a padlocked chest on his back. When a search discovered neither her beloved father nor her big-nosed sister, Amelia was certain that her poor unfortunate relations must have been in that benighted trunk.
The officers set off in hottest pursuit, picking their way through avalanches and mudslides, the valiant Miss Amelia riding in tandem behind one.
‘You mean to say that you have never heard of the evil Baron Greefenbludd?’ exclaimed the subaltern around whose waist Amelia clung. ‘I don’t wish to frighten you, Fraulein, but your poor dear relations could not have fallen into fouler hands, if they are indeed prisoners at Bäddeschløss Grange.’
In the shadow of Bäddeschløss’s mildewed, gloomy walls lay the tombs and vaults of the Baron’s ignoble ancestors. The gravestones leaned at crazy angles, and the marble charnel-houses were noisy with starlings. At the sound of hoofbeats, a distracted figure ran up from a vault and clung piteously to the black railings. In one hand was a bright yellow duster - otherwise the riders might never have seen her through the turbid mists. As they drew closer, they could make out the details of her dress and her large, looming nose. ‘It’s Evelyn! We have found her!’ cried Amelia. ‘Thanks be to …’
A Pack of Lies Page 15
