Watching the Wheels Come Off

by Mike Hodges

  ‘It’s glandular,’ squeals Buckle before adding a tentative, ‘Sir!’

  It’s as if Mark has lit a fuse in a box of fireworks. The class explodes with questions. Besides vying for Temple’s approval, they actually relish baiting the unfortunate Buckle. It takes them back to those glorious days in the school playground. The first to fire off is Jack Lovett, dowdy, middle-aged and memorable for his obvious toupee: ‘You’ll never be a millionaire…’

  ‘Like we will!’ proclaims the chorus.

  ‘…. ’cos the competition’s too tough, isn’t it, Buckle?’

  ‘Isn’t it, Buckle?’ cries the chorus.

  ‘’Course it isn’t,’ sobs Buckle. He’s confused, freaked out and, like Wally Straw, unable to comprehend such ferocious cruelty. But that’s because his memory is short. Mark would put it down to the maggot in Buckle’s brain. It’s clearly been working overtime all his life.

  Robin Moore now closes on Buckle, as he backs into a corner, peering at him through his cracked left lens. ‘Didn’t they teach you to compete at school, Buckle? Or didn’t they bother with useless fat slobs?’

  ‘I’m not useless,’ moans Buckle.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘And you’re a fat slob.’ Mark and the class have pursued Buckle into the corner, mobbing the weeping man from all sides. He cowers, sinking to the floor, as Mark leans over him.

  ‘It’s lonely at the top, isn’t it, Buckle?’

  He casts a look at Temple for any sign of humour. Not a flicker. His one-liner thus goes unacknowledged – but not by the class. They laugh.

  Laughter is heady stuff.

  The students add it to the hysteria that’s gripping them. ‘Why do you eat so much, Buckle?

  ‘I don’t,’ protests Buckle. ‘As I told you already, it’s glandular. Sir!’

  The class jeers and mocks Buckle.

  Humour having failed to impress Temple, Mark gets serious. ‘We want the facts about your business, Buckle. What about growth, Buckle? Is your annual turnover up with the national average?’

  ‘Gross, Buckle. Gross National Product,’ chants the class.

  ‘Not gross like you, Buckle.’

  ‘Why aren’t you lean and hungry, Buckle?’

  ‘Hungry to sell insurance.’

  ‘Everybody wants more and more insurance.’

  ‘Insurance for their homes.’

  ‘Fire insurance.’

  ‘Flood insurance.’

  ‘Personal-accident insurance.’

  ‘Insurance for their cars.’

  ‘Their pets.’

  ‘Their holidays.’

  ‘Their pensions.’

  ‘Their health.’

  ‘Their lives.’

  Biff gets the nod from Temple, and the litany is brought to an abrupt close. ‘Stop this crap, you dumb shits. You couldn’t find the source of Buckle’s problem if it jumped out and bit you in the balls, you stupid pricks.’

  The class backs off Buckle in disarray, frustrated like bloodhounds that have lost the scent of a fox.

  Temple jumps up energetically. ‘Thank you, Biff.’ He takes Buckle by the hand, gently bringing the sad, sniffling wretch to his feet. If Buckle thinks his torment is over, as he appears to, he is sadly mistaken.

  Temple has other ideas. ‘Okay, let me show you how to go about exposing Buckle for what he really is.’ He turns to his victim with almost a whisper: ‘Roger, your obesity is not glandular.’

  Buckle lets go an anguished cry: ‘But it is….. sir!’

  Temple sighs with mock despair. ‘Okay, if that’s how you want to play it, let’s have a look at the real Buckle. Take your clothes off.’

  Buckle stares at him, not quite believing what he’s heard.

  Randy confirms that what he thought he heard is what he actually heard. ‘Strip, you asshole. Take your fucking clothes off. Now! And make it fast.’

  Buckle sways, about to faint, recovers and starts to pull his clothes off. He’s not a pretty sight.

  But then not many of us are.

  twenty-seven

  The dreams we once shared about women making more humane leaders than men no longer even remain dreams. And the course under way in Hamilton Hall only endorses our disillusioning.

  One chunky student of uncertain age, heavily made up and with popping eyes, weeps pitifully. Mascara runs like tribal warpaint down her face. Joan Lovett screams in defiance at Alice, who is circling her like a shark sensing blood.

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘Don’t be stubborn, Joan. Throw the reality switch: let the truth shine out. Your husband has been fucking other women from the beginning. During your honeymoon he was already bed-hopping. His mistress was in the next chalet, remember? Okay, so Jack’s a respected Presbyterian lay preacher, right? So what? So Jack’s taken that job description seriously, that’s what.’

  Joan Lovett blocks her ears, still screaming: ‘No. No. No!’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Yes!’

  Alice pulls her hands away from her ears, forcing her to listen. ‘We have witnesses, Joan. Witnesses who have seen him at it. Bonking on chapel pews across the country, on altars, on his office desk, even on the back seat of the family’s people carrier.’ She gently lifts Joan’s head up, looking into her eyes, as if eager to find the truth. ‘Face the facts, Joan, Jack may stay in his box but his cock won’t. Suffer the little pussies to come unto me, and forbid them not. When it comes to adultery, Jack’s an over-achiever, isn’t he, Joan?’ She raises her voice to include the whole class. ‘Like most men!’

  A good vibes player is Alice. She has struck a chord that makes the class rise as one woman. Their collective consciousness has been expertly tapped, unleashing instincts as primal as those that drive termites to build a hill. The students let go a cheer that would have pleased Nero himself.

  twenty-eight

  Cheers and derisive laughter also occupy the airwaves in the Nelson Hall. The object of the students’ derision is currently in the Ring, sitting on a gold chair. He’s Jack Lovett, Joan’s husband, lay preacher and chief clerk in an accountant’s office. Jack’s reputation as a philanderer, a dowdy Don Juan in a shiny pinstripe suit, is being parodied by the instructors.

  Rip minces up to him.

  ‘Show us your technique then, lover boy.’

  Lovett looks at him in helpless dismay.

  Randy joins in. ‘You need an object of desire, don’t you, Jack?’ His eyes alight on Mark: ‘Mark Miles, into the Ring.’

  Mark jumps up.

  He, alone of all the students, remains spruce and manicured. The past six hours has seen all the others bloodied and roughed up. It’s now way after midnight. So is he, as Herman has promised, being saved for later? Was this the moment for the after-dinner mints? He flicks a glance at Temple, sitting against the wall with his eyes closed. It doesn’t look like it.

  Randy yells at him. ‘Sit on Jack’s lap.’

  Mark does as he’s told, like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘Now show us your technique, cock swinger.’

  Lovett puts his arms around Mark, both struggling to hide their disgust. Mark can’t take his eyes off the lay preacher’s toupee, which now clings like a baby koala to his right ear. Lovett clumsily begins to unbutton Mark’s shirt. The class crowds around, jeering and making obscene gestures at the pair.

  ‘Get on with it, darling.’

  ‘Give him a French kiss, Casanova.’

  ‘Stick your tongue down his throat.’

  A cheer goes up when Lovett adds to the grotesquery by nibbling Mark’s ear. Mark is rigid with revulsion.

  His maggot can’t keep up with events.

  Reality is all too horribly real. And remorse hovers in the wings. This pantomime is too close to his own life for comfort. He notices Temple signal Rip over to his side, whisper something in his ear, before sending him off at the double. What the fuck are they planning to do now?

  Biff interrupts his musing. ‘Get on with it, Lovett.
Wouldn’t you be stroking her crotch by now?’

  Lovett grunts in agreement. His right arm slides slowly from Mark’s chest towards his groin. The class, far from sharing Mark’s increasing disgust, exhort the arm to descend further.

  A command cuts through the din: ‘Okay, let’s stop it right there.’

  Temple has cued Randy to bring the class to heel. Temple hates to have to raise his own voice.

  The students back off, deflated, sheepish, but still sniggering. Smut is now in our blood. Saucy seaside postcards, Christmas pantomimes, end-of-pier comedians have made sure of that.

  ‘We don’t want to arouse Mr Miles any more than we have to.’ Temple allows himself a smile.

  For once, Mark is pleased to hear Herman’s hypnotic voice. He jumps out of Lovett’s lap. Some students, fickle as ever, congratulate him with pats on the back.

  Temple gets Lovett to stand up. ‘Jack, have you learnt anything from the experience you’ve just shared with us?’

  ‘Yes, I have, sir.’

  ‘And what is it? What truth about yourself has been unveiled?’

  The instructors silently corral the students into the Ring, so that they can symbolically share Jack Lovett’s impending metamorphosis.

  ‘Sir,’ says Jack, ‘just now I realised how Satan tricked me into treating the wife so badly. Sure, the other women were good…’ He hesitates, unable to say the word.

  Randy says it for him: ‘Fucks?’

  Lovett starts to blub. ‘Joan was just as good, honestly.’ Embarrassed, he pulls a white handkerchief from a pocket, shaking it loose, not as a symbol of surrender but in order to blow his nose. Temple winces at each rasping honk.

  Jack goes on: ‘By doing this course, Herman, sir, I’ve come to understand myself better. The other women meant nothing to me. Nothing.’ Jack gives another emphatic honk, as if to emphasise the point. ‘Except a good fuck.’ He looks wistfully at the ceiling, seeming to recollect fondly his numerous dalliances, and starts to blub again.

  Mark is surprised to feel a lump in his throat, and wonders if it’s incipient cancer.

  Jack wipes the tears away. ‘If only I had redirected my sexual drive into work, rampantly earning money, I wouldn’t be the failure that I am now, bankrupted spiritually and financially. Instead of being a spent force, I’d be a happy and successful man, and my wife and children…’ Overcome, he drops to his knees at Temple’s feet. His performance banishes the lump from Mark’s throat, replacing it with a fear of impending projectile vomiting. ‘I’d be a success, Herman. A leader of men, like you.’

  ‘Jack, do you really love Joan?

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes!’

  Temple brings him to his feet and tentatively binds him in his arms, making sure Jack’s mess of a face comes nowhere near his own immaculate, monogrammed shirt.

  ‘And you’ll never betray her again?’

  ‘Never! Never!’

  ‘Then why don’t you tell her yourself?’

  Temple turns Lovett round to face the double doors that have opened behind him. There stands his devoted wife, her face a waterfall of tears. She is flanked by Alice and Biff.

  Temple rests his hands on Jack’s heaving shoulders. ‘Did you hear what Jack just said, Joan?’

  Joan nods.

  ‘Do you believe him, Joan?’

  ‘I do. I do.’

  She runs to her husband, takes his head in hands red from endless washing-up, and kisses him lasciviously. Her eyes are closed, while Jack’s swivel wildly about like a trapped animal’s, but no matter. The class burst into spontaneous, respectful applause, emotionally awed by Temple’s skill at divining the truth.

  Temple, followed by Alice, leads Jack and Joan ceremoniously on to the stage. ‘Take hold of this ancient holy grail, Jack and Joan, and prepare yourselves to cross to the Other Side.’

  Each with a hand clutching the monstrance, they raise it above their heads. Blood, snot and tears: they look like a couple of boxers at the end of a gruelling bout.

  ‘What does it feel like over there?’ says Herman.

  ‘Great,’ says Jack.

  ‘A great achievement,’ says Joan.

  ‘Right on,’ says Temple. ‘Over there, this sublime feeling of achievement will stay with you for the rest of your lives.’

  Jack starts to cry, almost certainly motivated by the thought of enduring monogamy for the rest of his life. Joan cradles him in her arms and begins rocking him. ‘There, there, don’t cry, Daddy. It’s all over. You’re better now. We’ll be together for ever and ever.’ At this prospect Jack’s tears turn into convulsions. His whole body is racked with terrifying spasms and contractions.

  Temple looks alarmed.

  Mark can’t help himself and calls out loudly in another vain attempt to ingratiate himself: ‘“And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him.” Mark 1:26.’

  The class applauds.

  Temple’s eyes flash angrily at this stealing of his thunder especially when Lovett does indeed ‘cry out’ with a howl of unhappiness that would raise the dead. But the charismatic leader quickly recovers, and goes into the attack. ‘St Mark, not this heathen version here,’ pointing an accusing finger at Mark. ‘Not this viper in our midst. St Mark says in 1:27: “And they were all amazed, saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? for with authority he even commandeth the unclean spirit –”’ By now Temple is shaking like a voodoo priest – “‘and they do obey him.”’

  Lovett’s convulsions stop immediately.

  Even Temple can’t hide his surprise.

  The stunned students, open-mouthed, applaud again, leaving Mark to shrivel before the wave of hatred breaking over him, the viper in their midst. How is he to know Temple was until recently a ‘televangelist’. Unfortunately some paparazzo caught him, on camera, in an orgy with exactly twelve hookers in a Las Vegas hotel. His excuse that they represented the twelve apostles hadn’t washed with the subscribers to his ministry.

  ‘Thank you, Herman,’ says Joan.

  ‘Thank you, Herman,’ says Jack. ‘And thank you, Joan. Thank you for persuading me to come on this course.’ He extricates himself from his wife in order to face the class. ‘She had to force me, you know, because I didn’t want to come. Just think of that: missing all this companionship, all this love.’

  ‘Do you want to share that love with us, Jack?’

  Randy beckons them both down from the stage. Mark watches, incredulous, as the couple mingle among the students. They appear to be so happy, smiling and embracing each student in turn. When Jack reaches Mark, he clasps his head in his hands, eyeball to eyeball.

  ‘Thank you, Mark. Thank you for your positive contribution.’

  ‘My pleasure, Jack.’

  Mark looks for a flicker of deceit there, but there’s no life, let alone deceit, in Jack’s eyes. They’re as dead as glass marbles. Jack escapes Mark’s penetrating scrutiny by suddenly planting a mushy kiss on his lips. Temple, watching from the stage, turns to Alice, whispering: ‘“Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.” Matthew 26:48.’

  ‘Hold him very fast,’ whispers Alice back.

  She observes Mark wiping Jack’s nauseating kiss from his mouth and she smiles. He, in turn, senses her eyes on him and finds they are. Unfortunately, so are Herman’s. Both their gazes are as cold as Siberia.

  ‘Your attention please, class,’ says Herman. ‘As you have already witnessed, extracting the truth is an exhausting business. Like any miner working deep below the surface and in the dark, I periodically have to surface for air and sustenance to refresh my body and mind. So I am leaving you now for a short break, leaving you in the capable hands of Biff and his boys. Keep the truth coming, Biff.’

  The class applauds as he takes Alice by the hand, helping her down from the stage. Mark looks across at Jack, his most recent ‘date’, then at the lovely Alice, and he seethes. Life is a bitch.

  The students step aside as Herman an
d Alice move regally towards the doors. Once there, Temple suddenly stops, as if remembering something. He crosses to the cage, inside which crouches Roger Buckle, stark naked. Rolls of flab press against the mesh of wire, leaving red weals around his body. He looks ready to grill.

  Temple bends to talk to him. ‘How we doing in there, Buckle?’

  ‘Very good, sir!’ Buckle barks back, like a soldier on parade. Even more surprisingly, his face is beaming with rude health and happiness, seeming to be pleased with its lot.

  ‘Why are you fat, Buckle?’

  ‘Because I eat too much, sir!’

  Biff raises his arms and the students immediately salute Herman’s great achievement, and Buckle’s final recognition of the ‘truth’, with a riotous cheer. They jump up and down like kangaroos, embracing each other, crying crocodile tears. Herd instinct and mass hysteria have finally fused into a deadly concoction.

  They are now zombies.

  ‘That’s more like it, Buckle,’ says Temple. ‘See how easy it is, telling the truth?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘You’ll eat anything, won’t you?’

  ‘Anything, sir.’

  Buckle, thinking his torment is over, prepares to exit the cage. He’s wrong yet again.

  Temple stands aside as Rip returns from the kitchen with a pail of slop. Temple smiles when he sees it. ‘Feeding time at the zoo, gentlemen. So which of you is going to be the keeper?’ Temple’s eyes pan slowly around the class, deliberately bypassing Mark, then sadistically whip-panning back to him. ‘Into the Ring, Mark Miles.’

  Mark reacts as if he’s been tossed a hand grenade with its pin out.

  ‘Me?’

  Rip holds up the pail to him.

  Temple moves closer to Mark. ‘Yes, you. Feed him.’

  ‘With that?’

  Temple nods.

  Mark gags, turning away in disgust.

  ‘I can’t do it. Sir.’

  His response reverberates around the room, bringing the whole circus to a halt. It’s as if a seal has refused to balance a ball on its nose. Temple’s face drains white with anger; his mouth and eyes tighten into mean little slits. ‘Well, here’s an interesting case.’ He starts to circle around Mark like a lion tamer. ‘Mr Miles works in marketing and publicity, known as public relations, so he must dish out more lies and garbage and slop than anyone else in this room. Now, he suddenly can’t do it no more.’