by Jared Shurin
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Dennis. She could be tricky.”
“Oh, I’m aware that this is not going to be easy. Maggie of course is a big cheese in the Labour Party and I, as you know, am a lifelong Conservative.” I did not know, as a matter of fact, but I might have guessed. Coming as he did from an old Catholic family, his ancestors had probably been Tories since the days of the Old Pretender. “As you are aware, she almost certainly disapproves of me. You know how priggish and censorious these Socialists can be.”
“All political zealots of any persuasion are prigs.”
“Exactly. That’s the problem. She’s a zealot. I’m not and never have been.”
“But what if she just says ‘you’re mad’, and tells you to go to hell?”
“I can only hope that she has enough personal integrity not to do so.”
“But what if –? What if you are simply mistaken about this whole business?”
“Jack, we have been into this. I know it’s hard to believe, but I am not mistaken. I simply am not.” The tone of his voice was, I have to admit, level and sane. He told me that he would be encountering her ‘in the flesh’, so to speak at a Law Society banquet in two days’ time, and would ‘beard her’ there. I once again advised caution and rang off. There was nothing more I could do.
My next news of Dennis came via a short piece in the Daily Telegraph. Dame Maggie Standish had accused Dennis of sexual harassment and stalking and he was about to appear in court and probably ‘bound over to keep the peace’. He was being investigated and in disgrace. I couldn’t imagine what his state of mind was like but I felt guilty about him even though Jane insisted that I had done all I could.
I rang the Albany and was told that Dennis was recuperating at a private sanatorium in Kent called The Cloisters. The man who answered the telephone, an Albany concierge, also told me that I was one of the few people to whom he had been allowed to give this information. The very next day I drove over to The Cloisters.
It was a fine June day. If Dennis needed a refuge from his difficulties, he could have done worse than The Cloisters. Though the building itself, a red brick Edwardian sprawl attached to some monastic ruins – hence the name – was not very impressive, the grounds were extensive and serene. Smooth lawns fringed with deciduous woodland and views of the Kentish Weald beyond might have been vaguely reminiscent of his planet. A nurse showed me to the back lawn where I found him seated on a bench with a plaid rug over his knees contemplating the scenery.
I had expected to find a distraught wreck of a man, for Dennis’s reversal of fortune had been dramatic, but it was not like that. Dennis had lost weight dramatically and he had a haggard look, but he was not in any obvious distress. He greeted me with warmth and said he was pleased to see me.
“How are you?” I asked lamely.
“Dying,” he said cheerfully. “Inoperable cancer. I’ve had it for some time, apparently, but it’s only just been diagnosed. And, no, that does not explain anything at all. The brain has not been infected.”
“But you admit that you shouldn’t have gone after Dame Maggie in that way?”
“Not at all. I have exposed her for what she is: a ruthless dissembler and a fraud.”
“So you accused her to her face of being Thora, Goddess of Wind.”
“It was not an accusation, more an assertion.”
“Which she vigorously denied, no doubt.”
“Not exactly. She told me I was off my head and should see a doctor.”
“So why didn’t you leave it at that? Why did you persist in harassing and stalking her?”
“Because I couldn’t stop there. I had obviously rattled her. I was sure I could break down her defences and make her see sense.”
“But you didn’t. And now you are facing a trial and complete humiliation. I’m sorry; you’re ill and I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.”
“That’s quite all right. I know you mean well. As a matter of fact, this case will never go to court. I will either be dead or too sick to plead long before it comes to trial. I am going, as the Bible says, ‘to my long home’. I shall be resurrected as Coruvorn, in my own world.”
“And what about Dame Maggie?”
“I have exposed her. I have got her on the run. Mind you, I will have to rethink the whole of my religious position. I can’t be quite as easy going as I was.” To use an incorrigibly vulgar expression, from now on it has to be: No longer Mr Nice God.”
He seemed positively serene. Our conversation drifted pleasantly into other topics and though he responded amiably and intelligently I could tell that his mind was not fully on them. The things of this world were no longer his concern. I was relieved of guilt.
One morning, barely a week after that conversation, a doctor rang me from The Cloisters to tell me that Dennis had died in the night. She said it had been very sudden and unexpected, but it was more of a surprise to her than to me.
As it happened, that evening, in my capacity as literary editor of The New Observer, I was due to attend the launch party in the House of Commons for a book by Dame Maggie Standish entitled Human Rights and Human Wrongs – the Future. It sounded like one of those books which is destined to be more talked and written about than read; ‘an important contribution to the debate’ no doubt, but probably not a page turner. I had been debating whether to go but Dennis’s death decided me.
I had not encountered Dame Maggie in the flesh before, though I had seen her countless times on television. I was impressed. The fluent and passionate address she gave before signing copies of her book received enthusiastic applause. It was some time before I could get to talk to her, but I managed it eventually.
She was a tall handsome woman and exuded a personality that was certainly forceful but not unattractive. I had been prepared to dislike her, for my friend’s sake, but I could not do so. She had a way of fixing her full attention and considerable charm on whomever she was with. It may have been developed for professional purposes but it had a natural origin. I told her that I represented The New Observer, a journal for which she expressed courteous enthusiasm. When I casually mentioned my name I saw a slight bewilderment come into her eyes.
“You know Dennis Marchbanks, don’t you?”
“How do you know?”
“He mentioned you to me once or twice in his ramblings to me. You’re not going to ask me to drop my charges against him, are you?”
“No. There would be no point. He died last night.”
“What! Good God! I didn’t know that!” It seemed to me a slightly strange reaction.
“Why should you? I only just found out myself.”
“Did he...? Was it suicide?”
“Cancer. He’d had it for some time.”
“Ah...” She gave a sigh which I thought expressed relief but also a certain irritation.
“Well, that’s very sad,” she added in a flat voice. “If you’ll excuse me –” and she left abruptly.
Two days later, Dame Maggie was standing outside the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand talking to a film crew about her latest Human Rights case when a freak accident occurred. A sudden gust of wind blew up and must have dislodged one of the stone finials on the Gothic arches of the façade. It was a heavy piece of masonry and it fell some sixty feet onto Dame Maggie’s head, killing her outright.
Dennis Marchbanks’s memorial service at the Brompton Oratory under the direction of his confessor Father O’Hare, was a subdued business, but a surprising number of his colleagues were present. His recent aberrations went unmentioned in the eulogy. Death, both his and Dame Maggie’s, would appear to have expunged those egregious embarrassments.
After the service, I approached Father O’Hare and asked if I could speak to him about Dennis. He invited me back for a cup of tea in his rooms at the Oratory, and it was to him that I first related all that Dennis had told me. To begin with, Father O’Hare seemed hurt that Dennis had confided in me rather than his true Father Confessor
. When I told him that he had been fearful of offending an old friend, Father O’Hare softened a little.
“The poor foolish man!” he said. In the utterance of that phrase I caught for the first time a hint of O’Hare’s Irish origins. “Did he think I hadn’t heard things like that before? Did he really suppose I was so hidebound and censorious? In my time I’ve had to cope with much worse delusions from members of my flock. I had terrible trouble once with a young man who thought he was an egg. Well, you can imagine.”
As it happens, I could not. “So you think it was just a delusion?”
“Oh, lord, yes! It was all a lot of nonsense.” His tone was brisk, dismissive, almost irritable. “Mind you,” added Father O’Hare after a long and thoughtful pause, “if one must have a god, one could do a lot worse than Dennis Marchbanks.”
I was going to conclude there, but only last week I was informed that I had been left a small bequest in the will Dennis had made shortly before his death. I was touched. It consisted of several choice items from his antiquarian book collection, including a complete original set of The Yellow Book. There was one other item which was the reason why I had been informed so late, as there had been considerable difficulty in establishing its value for probate purposes. Several experts had been consulted and none could agree as to its date or origin.
Dennis had named it in the will simply as ‘my gold and lapis lazuli figurine’ and there was no mistaking it. It stands about six inches high, the figure of a tall gaunt man in solid gold holding a staff. He has on a cloak of brilliant deep blue, fashioned somehow out of pure lapis lazuli. The experts could agree only on one thing: it is a work of astonishing beauty.
Godziliad
Adam Roberts
Book 1
Godzilla’s wrath, to Earth the direful spring
Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!
What grudge could light the fierce atomic breath
That burnt so many citizens to death?
What move four mighty limbs to crush and tear
Whole city blocks and scatter them to air?
Vast anger that found voice and fuelled the roar
Of this whale-monkey-kind-of-ichthyosaur
Declare, O Muse! what woke such monstrous foe
And summon’d him from ocean bed below;
What stirred him from millennial slumbers deep
To swap-out slaughter for abyssal sleep?
What made this slug-a-seabed rise as killer?
Gods of ill, why made ye him, gods, iller?
The seagirt freighter Eiko-maru, bound
For Odo Island, stagger’d and was drowned;
Another ship – the Bingo-maru – sent
To search and save, like suffer’d sea-descent.
In vain the fisherman his reel-line wets;
The catch absents itself from trawling nets.
Come journalists upon the anxious scene
And peer with fear upon the glassy green.
Godzilla’s name is muttered on the street;
In bars and homes Godzilla folk repeat.
A ritual dance t’appease the monstrous foe
Is staged upon the strand – strange fandango.
Grim whispers pass from ear to ear: years past,
Young girls were sacrificed to beast’s repast.
No sacrifice averts the creature now:
Monstrous it comes, and monstrous is its tāo.
As storm-winds wrap the islands, an attack
Wrecks homes, kills livestock: all is maniac:
And having sent nine people to their graves
The beast sinks back again below the waves.
What first provoked this horror to arise,
To leave its depths and batten on the skies?
Say, Muse, what wickedness might cause such grief?
And thus mutate the creatures of the reef?
Atomic testing is the culprit here:
Atomic bombs pollute the atmosphere
Still through the waters sink particulate
Atomic poisons to divert our fate.
Man’s bombs explode, and loud their fiery roar
Re-echoes and re-echoes shore to shore.
Far in the deep recesses of the main,
Where aged Ocean holds his watery reign,
The god-kujira hears. The waves divide;
And like a hill it heaves above the tide;
Beholds humanity on naked lands,
And thus the anger of its soul expands:
“Unkind mankind,” the monster cries; “oh ye
“Un-sapient homos that abuse the sea,
“A cannon shell upon your bullet train
“I come, t’derail and hurl it in the main!
“To heap the shores with copious death, and bring
“Disaster dark from Tokio to Beijing.
“Let fall upon Japan’s aye rising head
“The bloody-red dominion of the dead,
“Know now regret that e’er ye durst disgrace
“The boldest monster of the Ocean race.”
Thus raging still, and moving his huge weight
Came stern Godzilla stedfast in his hate;
Nor mix’d with mercy, nor in council join’d;
For wasting wrath lay heavy on his mind:
In his black thoughts revenge and slaughter roll,
And scenes of blood rise dreadful in his soul.
He wades the breakers, breaking ships apace
And seventeen are sunk without a trace.
From Tokio comes Kyohei Yamane
To plumb this monstrous puzzle of the sea.
Great footprints, trilobites of greater size
Astonish his trained scientific eyes,
And all his scurrying activity
Points to but one cause: radioactivity.
To Tokio he returns with warnings dire
Of monsters bred in Science’s quagmire:
But tis too late! Godzilla’s on the scene!
And looking lizard-tough and lizard-mean!
Full fifty metres tall, this vasty brute
Too huge to be a man-in-costume-suit:
Sublime in giant stature heel to nape
He stamps to shards the toylike urbanscape.
Man strives in vain to slay what God enlarges
Aye pooping out explosion-primed depth-charges.
Such ordnance monsters laugh to very scorn;
They cannot harm a beast of H-bombs born.
Mere gravel off his scaly skin they bounce
And panicked men Gojira mispronounce.
Yamane’s daughter, Emiko, breaks off
Her old engagement to her former love,
Poor Serizawa, close but no cigar
Compared with her new love, young Ogata.
Japan’s Protectors build a mighty fence
Of 30-metre heighth, and pass intense
Electric charge along its wires and bolts:
Full fifty thousand terrifying volts!
But to the beast this fence no stronger stood
Than gossamer or drifting cobwebs would.
“Japan, submit; nor dare my will withstand!
“But dread the power of this avenging hand:
“Th’united strength of all the Japanee
“In vain resists th’omnipotence of Me!"
The thunderer spoke, nor durst Japan reply;
A reverent horror silenced all the sky.
The city wrecked, with grief Emiko saw
Her motherland undone, the gods in awe;
The wretched quarrels of Old Nature’s state
And politicians lost in blank debate:
Let senior soldiers senseless strife employ,
T’attack the Ocean’s Unit, th’Absolute Boy
Their pilots have their orders and comply,
And jet planes break the silence of the sky:
Roused to rage, they loose their missile load,
Launch the red lightning at the
Zilla’s god.
But all in vain the high explosive burns
The monster’s skin each empty shell returns.
The army’s rifles blaze like stutt’ring torches
But blithe Godzilla’s atom breath still scorches.
Attempts to kill the beast with tanks all tank;
Soon Tokio’s o’erdrawn at its blood bank.
The Wakō Clocktower, the National Diet
And Kachidoki Bridge fall to his riot.
Large loss of life, a city’s heart destroyed:
Tis more than could be fixed by celluloid.
Emiko tells Ogata, spills the beans:
Of Ser’zawa’s research and what it means.
An Oxygen Destroyer is her news
That works to break the O2 atoms loose,
Slays ocean life from whale to small crustacean
Consigning them to rot’s asphyxiation.
They ship the Doom Device into the bay
To Serizawa’s earnest heart’s dismay:
Lest others copy his most dread design
He vows to sink down with it in the brine
End his own life in detonating death
Deprive Godzilla, and himself, of breath.
Close to the point where tidal swell turns round,
The chugging frigate hurries cross the sound.
Now Zilla, rising from the seas profound,
The God whose earthquakes rock the solid ground,
His shouts incessant leave Japan aghast,
And fire feeds fire from belching atom-blast.
While thus the monster mocks a world destroyed
The Oxygen Destroyer is deployed.
Amidst the tumult of this martial run,
Die Serizawa and the beast as one.
The man is lost, the seas his corpse en-grave
The monster sinks in death beneath the wave.
Loud then the grief for noble Serizawa!
And tears of sadness griméd faces scour.
Full of the pain that urged their burning breast,
The Tokio-ians themselves express’d.
Heart-piercing anguish struck th’assembled host,
But touch’d the breast of bold Emiko most
