‘You know, I don’t think too much of these crepes,’ said Tackleberry, melted cheese oozing from the corners of his overfull mouth as though he were a sandwich toaster, ‘I far prefer the ones in my local cafe in Bruges, they make them with a type of honey you can’t get in this country, made by very rare Belgium bees. They have a special jar there in the cafe just for Tackleberry. And jam too, made from very exclusive dates you can’t buy in England. I like to dip my finger in and just suck. Ha! Do I shock you? Yes, that’s Tackleberry, absolutely outrageous, you just ask Tim! Now, are you going to introduce me to any of those pretty little foxy foxes, eh?’
Petula shook her head, scanning her fury for a convenient and representative place to take hold of, and do justice to it. Not only was this idiot, one who would probably refer to himself in the third person even if he was not high on drugs, not to her liking, but it seemed as though he had the audacity to consider her beneath his! Should she blame herself, and thus pretend she was still in control, or strike him in the face and find someone less militantly ignorant to be infuriated by? It was dreadful to move so suddenly from being socially accomplished enough to not take anyone in her circle’s explanations for their own behaviour seriously, simply assigning them their real motives, to actually having no idea what was going on, nor means of stemming this tide of destruction.
‘The danger,’ Tackleberry was saying, ‘with my style of acting is to end up hemmed in my own little universe and occupy it too perfectly. That kills my range, leads to typecasting, leads to stasis, yes, you’re following me? Which is most tedious, the typecasting, verily, verily, verily. At the moment all anyone thinks of when they want Tackleberry is of a big gorgeous boy in tight riding pants and that’s just so boring from Tackleberry’s point of view! Because Tackleberry is so much more than just that. Don’t fence me in. I am a creator, not a copycat. I’ve told Tim to send them my scripts, I write too you know, it’s all my own work. I want real roles, the grittiest I mean, but all they want, the clowns! All they want is a pretty arse on a horse! They all want Tackleberry, a piece of Tackleberry. But the wrong piece, because Tackleberry is not just a pretty arse, no, no, no, he is so much more than that. So much more, yes, I must insist on that point. Anyway, what about those foxies? I’m ready for some fox fur. Foxy, frisky foxies! Frrrrrr!’
Tackleberry scrunched his face up and squinted like a mole confronted by sunlight, his hands raised to his chin in homage to that creature or another, Petula wasn’t to know; ‘Find me foxies or I will hurt you! You do not want to feel the bite of Tackleberry!’
‘What? I’ve absolutely no idea what you’re talking about… Get your hands down from your face, you look… ridiculous.’
‘Foxy time!’
‘Stop talking. I don’t understand a single thing you’re saying… I don’t, so stop it… please.’
Petula was telling the truth. She was experiencing an attack of violent incomprehension she could barely bat back. Its cause, though vague, was nastier than any foul energy that could be attributed to Tackleberry alone. The will to resist his spiel, far less answer, was undergoing a reverse metamorphosis; the swift current of her anger slowed then reversed by a dam of paralysing disbelief. What was going on?
‘The foxies, the foxies!’
‘Stop that, just shut up!’
‘Girlies, foxy ladies, you know the kind, paw lickers!’
‘My head… I can’t bear this, I feel weird… bloody weird… I think I might be sick…’
In what seemed like slow motion Petula watched her hand open and the glass Tackleberry had given her tumble to the floor, roll to a halt and be crushed by a passing boot. The boot looked like Jazzy’s: heavy, clumsy and angry. The sort of boot that liked to stamp and thump, trampling down any more delicate object that crossed its path. Petula hated boots like that; she was on the side of the glass. She smiled sympathetically at the broken vessel, admiring the little shards ground into smithereens, their many splintered parts glistening like precious stones. Her fascination was mingled with a keen appreciation of danger; the room bristled with threats of every kind. It would do well to remember that the accident had occurred a long way away and therefore had nothing to do with her; she was safe, only an observer. All she had to fear was the voice she could no longer hear, her own, a pointless little secret best kept from the outside world that knew another voice, still hers, only less so; one that could be heard every time she opened her mouth. Let them connect her to that! Still, she was damned if she was going to make it easy for them by speaking: there was too much to enjoy in the glorious and over-directed silence that had discovered her. The rest of the room was flowering into a cartoon jungle last seen on children’s wallpaper, as wondrous to Petula as it was familiar to the macaws and toucans that populated its branches. As remarkably, there were trees she had never noticed before, growing alongside the chairs and other wooden objects in the room. Whatever was made of a natural substance, be it cotton, metal or flora, appeared to be accompanied by the place that produced it – looms, steel-mills and flower beds hovering round the guests like old cine reels, while the head of a cow, twisting from side to side, struggled to get its front and hind legs out of a leather armchair, oblivious to Chips Hall who sat slumped in its path. By way of contrast, plastics and other manmade fabrics fizzled and spat under her gaze, tupperware containers burning like oil-wells and polyester shirts shrivelling off men’s backs as if struck by napalm, her own silk dress dissolving sometime earlier into gooey scales. What the hell was happening? Of course Petula knew she must be seeing things, while remaining equally sure she was not. Was that how going potty worked? Hallucinations affected the eyes: this was the whole book of Genesis. Both views must be correct. It was a little shattering that she had never noticed this before; if two things could be true of the same state of affairs no wonder everyone always thought that they were in the right. Might every great mind simply be a doubt away from its opposite position?
Petula’s neck stiffened as she stood there aghast at the implications of this latest discovery, Tackleberry still jabbering away like a sermonising whisky priest, her own expression as inflexible as one lifted off a medal. She was quite lost, her former thoughts characters in a story that had gone wrong. Memories rushed to greet her by the thousand, the assigned masks they had previously worn cast off as new and frightening faces took their place; a past that no longer agreed with her, the voice she wished to suppress leading the charge, yelling at the top of its jeering range: ‘What overpriced counterfeit reality do you live in?’
Everyone’s first reaction to the truth shaped as an attack was mortification, she knew that, it was what one’s second response was that counted, and Petula was not to be caught short in quick succession. She had to snap out of it. With a determination that verged on the demented, Petula tried to move her face away from Tackleberry’s diarrheal flow, at the same time as silencing the voice of her conscience, if that was what she could hear yelling behind her ears, along with all the other debris erupting under her unconscious. The mental part of this operation, or the resolve to attempt it, was easier than its physical execution, for her head would no more bend than the Queen’s leave a ten pound note, the effort of trying to move leaving her wobbling with a crooked neck. Could anyone, she panicked, notice this? After all, she hadn’t said or really done anything yet; perhaps she was still safe!
‘I like fox hunting you see, in chaps, tight you understand, because Tackleberry likes to feel a bit of Tackleberry.’ Tackleberry had seized his genitals and was mimicking the movement of a rider, edging closer and closer to Petula’s leg as if riding a rocking horse. Behind her she sensed Tinwood peering over her shoulder, a boxer hoping his trainer would give him the wink to throw the fight, glad that she was bearing the brunt of the punches. He was an awful man yet even this fact did not matter as much as it had a moment ago. Restoring order was pointless, the temptation to let go for the first time in her life utterly compelling; the room and the party were past sa
ving, she had may as well take her place in the madness. But first she had to clear her way out of the undergrowth. Chandeliers, tablecloths and candles were covered in the wild jungle habitation that had always, she now guessed, been there, hidden behind the force of habit that stopped her from noticing this and so much else. Her guests, for example, were squawking birds and she a lion, a lion queen, lazy and tired after all her kills. The parrots, the cream of local society, were taking their cue from Regan, a subdued canary, and had each picked an actor, vultures all, to accompany them to their various bird-tables. With intense and forced jollity these minions were looking to engage the birds of prey in conversation, riding roughshod over their fear with the help of even more drink. The thought that she was paying for this fiasco, indeed, that it was her daughter’s coming-out party, was a tempting offer from reality to get a grip again, yet the call of the wild was too strong. Besides everyone was enjoying themselves, it was feeding time! The exception was Trafalgar, a felled elephant, who was disconsolately heading back along the corridor to take his leave in whatever giants’ graveyard his kind returned to. There was no time to stop him as Crispin Fogle, the young Doctor Who, who had been sat on the other side of the hall watching Tackleberry, stood on his chair, and pointing accusatorially at his fellow actor, leered at the top of his voice:
‘Who’s that ugly cunt?’
Tackleberry yelped as though stung by a ferocious wasp and ducked behind Petula, knocking Tinwood into the path of Jenny Hardfield and a platter full of braised partridges.
‘You see,’ he howled, ‘I told you, they’re all jealous of Tackleberry!’
‘Go away, leave me be,’ hissed Petula frantically, pulling free of his wet grip, her words vibrating like chords on a strange musical instrument.
‘A cunt with feelings!’ cried Fogle. ‘True poetry,’ he went on, ‘is absolutely indifferent to the form it is required to take, and so is the true poet. Hear me, for time is short and happiness, wanton whore that she is, is a very tight pussy called, I forget her name…’ At that he fell of his chair. Having landed he made no effort to get up, awaiting rescuers. Regan bent down and with the help of Astley hauled Fogle to his feet. Although he was grinning stubbornly, there was a dark thicket of blood oozing down the side of his head and his arms were flopping back and forth like a broken ventriloquist’s dummy.
‘Fogle, you’re a disgrace to the profession,’ hissed Astley into his ear, crossly lowering him onto a chair, ‘snap out of this and try behaving like a human being for God’s sake.’
‘Oh naff off bumboy,’ snapped Fogle, his goodwill having deserted him. ‘He must die!’ he shouted, pointing again to Tack-leberry who was cowering on the floor, ‘exterminate! exterminate! exterminate!’
‘Help me!’ screamed Tackleberry, scrabbling up to Petula’s waist, ‘I’m marked for death, tripping my nuts off too! This has all gone wrong, so wrong for Tackleberry! Help!’
‘What? What are you marked for? No. Stop. No. Stop. This. It isn’t right, whatever’s happening to me… is wrong too,’ gasped Petula, this time sure that a device had abseiled into her brain and was talking on her behalf, ‘make this stop, stop! No! Tripping what nuts? What? Oh God, I’ve been drugged haven’t I?’
‘I thought it would be fun, I thought it would stop the night from being so bloody boring! I’ve never even tried it before?’
‘Tried what? Please, I’m scared!’
‘What do you think, acid! And I’ve had two!’
‘Two what?’
‘We’re on lSD you silly bitch!’
‘How? How could I be?’
‘I gave you my drink; it was spiked. In case I didn’t meet any foxies and had to sit next to you.’
‘What?’
‘To loosen you up and make you more interesting; I was bored!’
‘Bastard! I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll report you to the police…’ ‘Those birds, keep them away from me,’ Tackleberry pointed to the partridges, scattered over the floor like discarded toys, ‘the gravy they’re in, it’s speaking. Saying the most horrible things! Make it stop!’
Petula looked down and to her horror saw that Tackleberry was right, the oily backs of the birds appeared to be moving in concert and in doing so disclosing secrets about the marinade, for though it was the gravy that spoke it was the marinade it derived from that possessed the knowledge, had always possessed the knowledge for it was a sage and wise substance… Petula cupped her ear and listened to its song of strange and wonderful sufferance, an aromatic melody that would put her off rich sauces for the rest of her life.
‘Strewth, this is strong,’ Petula exhaled. She repeated herself as firmly as she was able, mindful that it fell light years short of what she wished to express, which was that she was in the very mouth of madness. Her breathing was heavy and ponderously slow; it was an achievement to have been able been able to breathe so well in the past, taking oxygen really was very hard work. Gradually she noticed that her feet, formerly the most reliable part of her body, were losing their footing and that she was stooping at rather an unsustainable angle. Next she was at ground level taking her place with her new friends, the birds, where there might be safety in numbers. She was a lion queen no longer. With no clear idea of where or who she was anymore, and no memory of who she had been ludicrous enough to believe she could be when the occasion last arose, Petula saw what it all boiled down to: control or its absence, the light and dark of her life. Why was she so scared of being abandoned by her great comforter? The answer was obvious. There were no fellow pilgrims in this valley. Without the protective veneer of control she was completely alone with the earliest fact she had ever grasped; that she was an irredeemable and friendless failure.
‘It’s a disaster,’ she muttered. It was expected yet still a complete shock. The iron law of life, win or lose, and she on the wrong side of it for once, cast amongst the beaten and hated. She had arrived at her eternal destination; the roasted skins of the cooked birds far too like that of charred human flesh for Petula to believe she was not in hell.
‘It is a disaster,’ said one of the partridges, closest to her hand, with an empathy no human was capable of.
‘I know,’ Petula replied, wiping away a tear.
The tenses had switched, her modest successes a feature of the past, the future the property of her critics. If she were only stupid enough to enjoy second best, to lounge safely through existence like the hedonistic zombies who were careering through her wine reserves, then she too might discover the joys of waking up and remembering nothing. Like children who would rely on the memories of adults, destined never to discover that recollection was the proper completion of experience, this carnival of stupidity possessed a lightness that would always elude her. It was not fair. There was nothing about pain she did not already know and no God, even one she did not care to be observed by, could inflict a trial as pointless as this without even the consolation of a lesson learnt.
For the second time that evening Petula felt the nauseous after-burn of a notion she had never hitherto entertained. She had been taught a lesson, a lesson in being made to feel awful, a condition she took pride in foisting on other eminently deserving souls when their behaviour compelled it. Without it control would have amounted to no more than self-control, the part of that activity that interested her the least. Her mood of lingering devastation must be what it felt like to be on the receiving end of her ire, to be someone else that she hated! For a hopeful sanctimonious second Petula tried to convince herself that she hated no one, but it was no good, she hated plenty. What, then, to do? Wake up tomorrow and resolve to never make anyone feel as bad as this again? Or slowly weave another version of events that she, or at least the others, might believe? One where she had simply twisted her ankle when that noisy Belgian barged into her: there had been no singing marinade, self-doubt or road-to-Damascus experience to report of. The backstage area that had witnessed it all was no more than her own mind, which for political purposes did not exist.
On.
She had been sat on the floor for less than a minute, a broken aqueduct in a ruined city, arousing the concern, if not the suspicions, of Astley, who tapped her on the shoulder and asked gently: ‘Are you alright old girl? Donald tells me that wanker Tackleberry has been poisoning people’s drinks.’
‘I think I might have succumbed to a dose,’ said Petula, standing slowly to attention, ‘nothing I can’t manage or rise above.’
‘Then you’re one of the lucky ones. Those two,’ Astley pointed to the Winkles, Petula’s solicitor and his wife, ‘I think they’ve got psychosis or the like. Tackleberry gave them a tray of fizz when they got here. And the rest, as they say, is mental history.’
From behind a long green curtain that mercifully appeared to have lost its jungle trappings, Petula could see two sets of feet, a man and a woman’s, meekly peeking out from under the cloth.
‘They’ve been there for the last ten minutes and the couple they arrived with are hiding under their coats upstairs refusing to come out, or take questions.’
‘Jesus, I don’t know how I’m ever going to make it up to them. What should I do?’
‘Best make a joke of it when, and if, they are restored to their senses. They’ll be too embarrassed, hopefully, to press charges.’
‘Nothing like this has ever happened here before.’
‘I can well believe it. I’d have to go back to a food-fight with The Who and Olly Reed since I last got caught up in this kind of carnage!’
Nature and Necessity Page 27
