EXTRACTS:
Mr Romance by Miles Gibson

EXTRACTS Wrestlers - Romantic Fiction - God - Sex - Poison Pen letters - Food and restaurants - The Literary Set

Wrestling – The art of wrestling revealed:

Someone was mutilating my collection of Grappler magazines. It began with the issue featuring Junkyard Dog, the big New Jersey brawler who had recently been elected in a readers’ poll as the Crazy Man of the Year. Someone had been cutting holes in him. The Junkyard Dog had lost one eye and part of a wrestling boot. It continued with the tag-team special. The battling Buffalo Brothers had been cut in half by a lunatic with a pair of scissors. Rampaging Randy Buffalo had been chopped away at the knees. His brother had completely lost his head.
There was no doubt that the culprit was Senior Franklin. But why would he bother with Grappler? He pillaged the daily newspapers for essays and reviews, poetry and political comment. He plundered the weeklies for Dwarf droppings, snippets of tittle-tattle and literary gossip. He couldn’t be interested in the politics of the squared circle. It was a puzzle. And anyway, he hadn’t removed complete pages or even paragraphs from the magazines but contented himself with random headlines, phrases and isolated words. He wasn’t concerned with the photographs, of course, but the editorial on the back of them. He was making alphabet confetti.
When I confronted him with the crime he looked surprised.
‘Were they of any particular interest?’ he asked. He was sitting in the sofa, happily slashing the arts section of the giant Sunday Superior. The scissors flashed in his bony hand.
‘I save them,’ I said. ‘I’m collecting them.’
‘Wrestling magazines?’ He looked astonished, as if the idea that I took such an interest had never before occurred to him; as if the magazines somehow came and went like mushroom rings. ‘You’re collecting them?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘They’re mine.’
‘Did you never suppose that the agony of your adolescence might best be served by the random application of drugs, self-abuse and rock and roll?’ he said impatiently. ‘Why can’t you be a crackhead like any respectable child of your age?’
‘I study wrestling to provide myself with a totally unrealistic view of violence and its consequences,’ I said, in my own defence. ‘At the earliest opportunity, I plan to go out and hurt old ladies.’
He frowned and then honked with laughter. ‘Ah, my squidgy bumblestrop, but the game is rigged, the lottery itself is lost! These warriors of your circus world are nought but acrobats, tuppenny tumblers, valgus vagabonds!’ He chuckled to himself as he went back to work with the scissors.
‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ I said defiantly. It just wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t going to be bullied into submission by a man who didn’t know a camel choke from a chin lock.
‘But these battles are nothing but comic routines, theatrical performances, carefully scripted, doubtless rehearsed and designed for no greater purpose than to pick the pockets of noodles, numskulls, nincompoops and simpletons,’ he continued, still hoping to shame me. ‘Shatterpates, jobernowls, loony-heads and dizzards. Drivellers, babblers, sappy-straws and halfwits.’
‘I know that.’
He paused and stared at me. The scissors dangled on a crooked finger. He was waiting for his venom to take effect. ‘I do declare I can’t fathom you!’ he said, at last, and wagged his head as if he were disappointed.
‘I don’t care!’ I said fiercely. Damn his eyes! ‘I don’t care for your opinion. And I’ll thank you for keeping away from my property.’
‘Why don’t you follow a real sport?’ he demanded, with a fair degree of prickliness.
‘Because it’s not the same,’ I said. ‘I mean, when you watch a tennis match you know that the champ is going to win because he’s a better tennis player than his opponent. And because he’s the champ he’s probably a millionaire with his own sportswear company and an aftershave named after him and everything. And if he doesn’t win, well, it makes no difference because the new champ will get his own brand of sportswear and his own range of personal hygiene products to peddle. So nothing really happens. It’s a fake. It’s just millionaires playing bat and ball. But if there was an element of danger, if you knew there was the possibility of a 300-pound, pot-bellied monster in wrestling boots with his name tattooed on his forehead crashing onto the court, shredding the net, eating the ball and then beating out the champ’s brains, well, you’d have something to catch your imagination. There’d be risk. And romance. And a real sporting chance that the golden boy would get his Rolex rammed up his arse.’
‘And that’s wrestling?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And zombies and werewolves and giants and dwarves and fire-eaters and missing links and mad monks and Pacific island cannibals and Caribbean witch doctors and tattooed ninjas and rampaging Russians and moustachioed Mongols and tumbling Turks and fighting Fijians and cartwheeling cowboys and Syrian stranglers and masked men of mystery and caped crusaders and gladiators from the grave.’
He opened his mouth but said nothing. He sat transfixed, his skin was wax and his eyes were glass. It was a curious sensation to watch him endure his own silence.
‘So why are you cutting up Grappler?’ I demanded.
His eyes flickered as he came back to life. ‘Alas, my frumious bandersnatch!’ he barked. ‘I’m flummoxed. I’m confused. I’m shocked to the core. I’m all thrown down in a heap! I wasn’t aware that I’d trespassed so far from the pastures grown for my grazing.’ He gathered together his torn newspaper and tried to stuff it under a cushion. ‘The scissors, I confess, must have gathered a life of their own. I’m hardly aware that I’m doing it.’ He snapped the scissors together and dropped them into a jacket pocket. ‘I trust you’ll accept my apology.’
‘Have you finished with that newspaper?’ I asked.
He lifted the cushion and watched me remove the rubbish.
‘Thank you,’ he said meekly.
And that was that. He continued to shred the newspapers every day, although he never again touched the Grappler. But the mystery remained.

EXTRACTS Wrestlers - Romantic Fiction - God - Sex - Poison Pen letters - Food and restaurants - The Literary Set

On Romantic Fiction and Katie Phart, author of The Cornflower Chronicles, the Sultan’s Embrace and Secret Throb of Desire:

‘We are told that Katie Pphart has dropped another brick into the bottomless well of exoteric literature,’ he announced, wagging the scrap of paper between his finger and thumb.
I tried to assume an expression of mild surprise and interest, enough to satisfy him that I was listening, without suggesting that I cared to know more. It didn’t work.
‘It’s called The Cornflower Chronicle,’ Franklin continued. He held the torn paper at arm’s length and squinted as he struggled to read it. He was a young man but did his best to look like an elder statesman. He was tall and gaunt and favoured old tweed jackets and hairy waistcoats with green brass buttons.
“Satin-shouldered Harriet Harper has recently moved to the old manor house,” he bellowed at me, “where her employer, fresh-faced Hugo Hudson, the notorious collector of priceless Chinese porcelain, and Laurel, his crippled but strangely seductive half-sister, trick her into an evening of ritual abuse with Buttocks the butcher. A powerful tale of one woman’s journey of self-discovery!”
I began to circle the sofa, collecting newspapers from the floor and folding them into a parcel. I knew that Katie Pphart was Janet’s favourite novelist and Franklin enjoyed making mischief. He despised the work of Katie Pphart. She produced an endless stream of romantic blockbusters with embossed and bejewelled covers. Her last great success, The Sultan’s Embrace, had been Janet’s bedside companion for months.
‘Well, should we toss our scented bouquets or shall we lapidate the lamia?’ he demanded. ‘What sayeth thou, my sallow saveloy?’
‘I suppose it’s a romance,’ I said simply, hoping that this observation was a suitable reply to his question. I nursed the bundle of wastepaper and waited for my chance to escape. The ink had turned my fingers black.
‘It’s ridiculous!’ Franklin honked.
I shrugged. ‘Romance is always ridiculous,’ I said. ‘Think of Shelley and Byron and Keats.’
‘Sycophants and sodomites!’ he shouted. ‘Pedlars of high-pitched doggerel. Half-grown men who took their revenge by chewing the necks of mincing matrons in middle-class drawing rooms!’
‘It couldn’t be worse than Katie Pphart.’
He flared his nostrils at me, screwed the scrap of paper into a pellet and swallowed it. ‘I shall need some time to digest that remark,’ he said and settled down to sleep.

EXTRACTS Wrestlers - Romantic Fiction - God - Sex - Poison Pen letters - Food and restaurants - The Literary Set

Learning to live with God:

I was first introduced to God at around the time I was told about Death. The two spectres arrived holding hands. Until that moment I had crawled and dribbled a path through the world believing myself to be immortal. My universe was a small bed in a wooden cage, a blue plastic chair and the carpet. I was new and resilient. I would eat anything that reached my mouth. I could fall asleep hanging upside down. I laughed when you squeezed me, bounced if you dropped me. My eyes were blue and my bones were made from rubber. The news that Death brought an end to life was impossible to imagine. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t existed. How could I confront such a time in the future? And this moment after life, this darkness called Death, intrigued and frightened me. It made a nonsense of being born. It made a mockery of life.
God followed hard on the heels of Death, introduced, I suspect, in a bid to soothe and diminish my fears. It didn’t work. It was hard enough to live with Death without living in the knowledge that after Death you might have to make your way to Heaven. And Heaven remained a doubtful prospect. Invisible and unexplored. A lost continent in the clouds. The end of the rainbow. The silent land of no return. There were so many practical questions with no satisfactory answers.
‘Does anything happen in Heaven?’ I would ask of my mother, still strong in my simple belief that this woman must know everything.
‘Nothing,’ she would say, wearily. ‘People go there to rest.’ It was usually at breakfast when these questions came into my head and they never seemed to find her in the mood for spiritual inquiry.
‘How old are we in Heaven?’
‘It depends on your age when you get there.’
‘How?’
‘It depends.’
‘But if a baby dies on earth will it remain a baby in Heaven?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And if you die when you’re very old, will Heaven help to make you grow younger? I mean, if you’ve lost all your teeth, will they grow back again?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How do they measure the time? Are there any clocks in Heaven?’
‘I don’t know!’ she would shout at me, suddenly losing her patience. ‘Shut up and eat your breakfast!’
Father couldn’t answer my questions, although he often made half-hearted efforts. His own view of the afterlife was even more obscure than my own. He saw it as some sort of beautiful white stage-set filled with actors like Roger Livesey and David Niven, drifting around in period costume. He added a lot to the general confusion. But as soon as I began to read, God in His Heaven was promptly retired and in His place came the books about Jesus.
They were large, improving storybooks, written in a gushing prose and filled with sentimental pictures. I remember very little about these books but for some black-and-white illustrations by a woman called Emily Bagley, in which all the characters seemed to be wearing striped towels and fake beards.
And it came to pass that in those days Jesus came in several disguises.
There was Jesus the Pied Piper, stealing children from their mothers and leading them away to the Father. I didn’t want to go with Him. I didn’t want to follow.
There was Jesus the Watcher, the bogeyman, the magic eye at the keyhole that never stopped staring and staring at you, even when you needed to be alone to pick your nose or sit at peace on the lavatory.
There was Jesus the Tyrannical Uncle, who was always right, who was never wrong, who argued with everybody and had an answer for everything.
There was Jesus the Ghost, appearing and disappearing, with a polished gold plate behind His head and His arms outstretched and holes in His hands and His sad eyes rolled towards Heaven.
The crucifixion troubled me – God who sacrificed Himself in the flesh. And some little time later, although we weren’t Catholics, the news that Mary, mother of Jesus, was also the mother of God created another confounding puzzle for a boy intent on bringing some organisation into a disordered world. If Mary was the mother of God then it followed that Mary’s mother was the mother of the mother of God and this thread, by a child’s logic, would lead directly back to Eve who would, by the same logic, be the mother of all the mothers of God; and God, who had created Eve, would also be Eve’s creation. It was very hard to imagine.
Despite such serious doubts, I tried to reach God in my prayers. I prayed, of course, to be spared from Death and be granted certain advantages, such as X-ray vision, the power of flight and the cloak of invisibility. These small gifts – the fantastic dreams of boys – would be nothing for the Almighty. He never replied to my pleading and even when I became less ambitious and begged for more humble favours – a proper penknife, a gas-propelled rocket – he didn’t appear to show any interest. I tried to strike bargains. A lifetime’s obedience in return for saving me from the dentist. A promise to become a monk in return for a bicycle. He didn’t listen. The last time I’d turned to the power of prayer I was trying to manipulate Jessica Proud into acts of gross indecency, but they were such disgraceful requests I didn’t deserve an answer.

The Glad Tidings Bible Tract Company Mail Order Catalogue:

Late that night, as I sat in bed with Lottie Pout, I heard a scuffling at the bedroom door. I pulled myself reluctantly from hot Lottie’s elastic nipple and went to investigate. The mysterious visitor had fled but left a large brown envelope on the floor. I took the envelope into my bed and found it contained, to my great disappointment, a dog-eared copy of the Glad Tidings Mail Order Catalogue. Dorothy must have felt that I needed some extra encouragement.
I settled back in my pillows and flicked with dismay through the glossy pages. The catalogue was the size and weight of a telephone directory and contained all the booklets and magazines, the tokens and charms, that helped the struggling missionary to travel safely among the heathens.
There were many bibles, as you might suppose, in different editions, and books of prayer and popular hymns and crucifixes and candles. But there were also comic books, posters, postcards, libraries of tapes and several pages of button badges. And there were T-shirts, sweaters and baseball caps embroidered with comical Christian slogans: Christ I love Life! and God Knows Why I Picked This T-shirt! And Jogging for Jesus tracksuits – pure cotton, one size fits all – and John the Baptist shower caps and Samson-strength luxury bath towels embroidered with your choice of proverb.
And there were novelty, cast-iron, Moses in the Basket doorstops and Christmas carol door-chimes and apostle key rings and Noah’s Ark jigsaw puzzles and Nativity tapestry kits and giant inflatable rubber globes printed with maps of the bible lands. And there were crucifixion holograms, framed and ready to hang on the wall, with Charlton Heston as Christ in a crown of thorns and a twinkle of blood on his neatly trimmed beard. And there were reproduction brass rubbings and Ten Commandment coffee-mug sets and Three Kings in a snow-shaker and Queen of Sheba pot-pourri and Galilee bath salts and sinister glow-in-the-dark Baby Jesus in a Manger bedside ornaments and handy pocket Madonnas, with Ingrid Bergman cast as the Virgin, finished by hand in genuine hall-marked silver.
There was no end to this stuff! Pages and pages of mawkish knick-knacks, wall plaques and souvenirs. It was quite a revelation! And, as I had feared, Dorothy was working on some sort of bonus incentive scheme. She earned a small commission on every Jumping Jesus she sold, a good deal more on the leisure-wear and a tidy amount on the jewellery. If she procured ten new names for the catalogue’s mailing list she received a free, nylon travel bag.
The catalogue itself was an article of worship and held the unspoken promise that Heaven would be a Disney World in which all your favourite characters – Abraham, Judas, Jonah, Herod and the rest – would come out to greet you every night in a grand illuminated parade. You could shake hands with Mary and Jesus (don’t forget your camera!) and try the latest white-knuckle rides. The Great Flood. The Flight from Egypt. Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The Glad Tidings Bible Tract Company was a formidable industry. An influential financial power with considerable tax advantages. A major employer of clerks and accountants, an important consumer of wood pulp and paper. The New York headquarters, pushed like a stake through the heart of Manhattan, had been designed by a team of prize-winning architects. Marble and bronze. No expense spared. The Glad Tidings Bible Tract Company was a powerful organisation. And because it broadcast the word of God you couldn’t fault its credentials.

Sex - Lottie Pout in Frolicking Fatties magazine:

Finally I switched on the bedside lamp, leaned overboard, poked my fingers under an edge of frayed carpet between the wall and the bed and recovered my copy of Frolicking Fatties. But nothing could bring me comfort and even the sight of pot-bellied Lottie Pout, with her slap-happy smile and elastic nipples, failed to work its nocturnal magic. Frolicking Fatties had provided me with many faithful companions during the long, cold nights of winter. Whenever I couldn’t sleep I would hook out the magazine and let myself loose in its gallery of readers’ wives.
I loved this exotic bestiary of fat housewives on parade in corners of suburban living rooms. The pictures were dark and badly composed and always included the furniture – a bag of knitting in a small armchair, a lava lamp on a chest of drawers, a paper lampshade in the ceiling, shoes and underwear spilled on the floor. The dimpled divas strutted on shag pile, hoicked up their skirts and pushed out their buttocks like cheerful African gods. They had snagged stockings and crooked smiles and bellies the size of prize-winning pumpkins. Yet they were nothing compared to the gatefold where Lottie Pout waited to pounce in her creaking, pink satin waspie. Lottie Pout was a porker! The sight of her always worked on me like a rush of opium. The symptoms were agitation and fever, followed by blissful narcolepsy. But tonight she failed to take effect as I fingered my bone of contention. Janet had immunised me against lewd Lottie’s charm and although I tried to picture Janet – greatly engorged and thoroughly brazen – turning her into a frolicking fatty proved beyond my imagination.
I was struggling to return the magazine to its hiding place when I heard the floorboards creaking near the bedroom door. I froze in alarm, hanging upside down with my arm trapped beneath the bed. There was someone prowling on the landing. There was someone skulking outside my door. I let myself slide from the mattress, plunged across the room in search of my dressing gown and squandered precious moments cramming my feet into shoes.
Corset Creakers and Rascals in Rubber (197)
I counted the days to the end of the month when Dorothy would slip from my grasp. I’d be lucky to reach Jeremiah. Time enough to qualify for a button badge, my mail-order salvation medal. But no time left for love’s delights to fatten and sweeten on the bough. I needed Cupid’s rapid shot. I needed a miracle.
In the chaos of my lovesick dreams I plotted Katie Pphart kidnaps, smuggling my true love away to far-flung islands, secret castles and isolated mountain cabins and she, in this wild and primitive state, surrendered herself to my dubious care. How simple these storybook seductions! The heroines become hedonists as soon as they’re through the gate to the garden of innocence. Allow them a moment to stand in the sun and they throw away their modesty with their button boots and their crinolines. And so in my dreams we became naked children. We collected honey and fruits of the forest. We hunted crayfish and chased the wild rabbits.
These wholesome views of nature degenerated soon enough into scenes of robust copulation. I corrupted my trusting captive into a freckled concubine, my sun-kissed nympholept, my naked acrobat, a slave to her master’s monstrous whims. When she failed to amuse I was lavish with her punishments, I gave her no mercy, I spared her no cruelty. She was spread. She was spanked. She was forced to endure unspeakable acts of debauchery.
1. He commandeth her to be laced in a corset that be drawn so tight her buttocks do swell to prodigious proportions, whereupon he doth make his cruel designs with a goose feather dipped in ink.
2. He shaveth her whiskers most carefully and maketh her squat as to watch her piddle into a pot.
3. He bindeth her wrists and listens not to her pleading but causes great mischief within and without her chemise.
4. He doth blindfold her eyes and commandeth her enter on hands and knees to sippeth milk from a dish like a beast.
5. He spoileth her with wine and then stealeth upon her at night to feast on her fingers and toes.
6. He dresseth her for a nunnery and maketh her jump on a trampoline.
7. He catcheth her by the throat and though she do struggle and cry out he leaveth many tremendous hickeys.
8. He delivereth her to a Nubian who tickleth her extremities.
9. He bareth her tender hindquarters and spanketh them with a strap two cubits long, fashioned from leather and knotted silk.
10. He doth pluck and plunder her titties while she singeth Victorian battle hymns.
11. He filleth her palm with silver and stuffeth her ear with flattery until she kneeleth as a harlot to suckle his privy member and yet she careth not.
12. He doth fatten her with sweetmeats until she swelleth to a noble size and cannot rise from the bed but must tolerate his rummaging.
Shake your head. Turn the page. But allow me the comforts of speculation! What else do we have but imagination to separate ourselves from the brutes? We are human because we have learned the skills to turn our desires into dream, fears into fantasy, curiosity into art. We are human because we alone have the gift to make love with our minds and our hearts. We are mad with love. We are sick with love. These erotic obsessions do not reduce us to the state of beasts but only serve to make us human. And because we are human we are quick with invention. We create the rituals, myths and magic. We fill our dreams with forbidden strangers, cruel caresses and strange encounters. We punish ourselves. We adore ourselves. We abuse ourselves. We confuse ourselves. We cry out to be teased and tantalised. Pornography is a figment of our own imaginations. We feed the fire with our fantasies and fears. How can it be smothered or stifled? We spread the flame as we trample it.
And besides, in this tug of war between the forces of good and evil, Dorothy had the advantage of angels pulling on her team.
Molesting shoes
My mother had fallen asleep in front of the television in the back parlour where she’d settled herself for the world wrestling tag-team championships. Father was locked in the cellar. I was at work in the kitchen, sitting at the table, molesting a pair of Janet’s shoes. I don’t remember how I first persuaded Janet to let me loose in her wardrobe, but once the custom had been established it became a weekly ritual to carry her hoard of shoes to the kitchen for an ardent evening of wax and polish.
The collection assembled for my admiration on that particular occasion contained: one pair simple black court shoes; one pair jaunty red lace-ups with rolling tongues; one pair white sling-back sandals with spiky, scuffed high heels; one pair charcoal grey stilettos; and one pair dainty suede ankle boots that, with a measure of gentle persuasion, would accept my hand as far as the wrist. This little harem of shoes could make me feel absurdly elated. I felt aroused in the knowledge of their possession, debauched by my fumbling and fondling.
I was working on one of the grey stilettos, sitting in my chair with a newspaper spread on the table to catch the tiny, oily crumbs from the sweetly scented cakes of Cherry Blossom in their flat, old-fashioned tins. I had recently inserted three fingers into the soft, leather throat of the shoe until my fingertips were nesting where her toes had left their faint but indelible impression, and had already dipped my brush in the polish when the doorbell rang. Damn! I raised the brush to the shoe and listened, waiting for someone to answer the bell. Nothing happened. I tried to ignore the intrusion, working polish into the leather. Cradle the shoe and know the woman. The weight of her body has balanced it. Her movements have stretched and fashioned it.
The bell rang again. I withdrew my fingers, set down the brush and hurried impatiently from the kitchen to unlock the heavy front door, rattle the chains and wrench at the bolt.

Rummaging through the underwear drawer:
The next morning I tried to raid Belgium again. The house was quiet. Marvel was still asleep in China. He was trying to summon the strength to pursue his mysterious weekly errand and was not to be disturbed. Franklin was in the attic putting the B into BasTArd. Janet had gone to work at the usual time. Dorothy, with a little coaxing, had returned to St Boris the Sufferer to purchase a full set of colour postcards. Father had taken himself to market. And mother, tired of waiting for me to finish clearing breakfast away, had already gone into Mexico. It was perfect. Mr Romance loitered in the kitchen for a few minutes, trying to gather his courage and at nine-fifteen precisely, armed with a bucket of dusters and polish, he finally tiptoed up the stairs and slipped across the Belgian border.
The room was still charged with her perfume. A shot of Pandemonium that drifted on the air like mist. The heavy doors of the wardrobe had been closed but left unsecured. Her make-up stood crowded among the many glass knick-knacks scattered about the dressing table. There were books arranged on top of the polished chest of drawers. A travel alarm on the bedside table. A Glad Tidings Bible Tract paperback bible. A water glass. Spare spectacles. A half-eaten bar of hazelnut chocolate. It was everything I’d imagined. Dorothy was everywhere.
There were one or two disappointments. She had made her own bed, depriving me of the heart-stopping pleasure I had anticipated in driving my arms, with shirt-sleeves rolled, between the fading warmth of her sheets to smooth out the night tide of folds and wrinkles. She did not abandon her clothes on the floor, which might have allowed me some insight, with no more work than to walk the carpet, into her taste in underwear. These items were of more than passing interest since I fancied she must gird her loins with garments made from nothing but cotton, pure and simple, uncompromising and durable, with sensible, warm designs built on secure, unyielding foundations. The buckle-down Invincible. The Dreadnought draughtproof superior. Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together, as you’ll know from Deuteronomy. No pagan panties for Dorothy, with their soft silk ribbons and beards of lace. But I saw not a shred of evidence. The carpet was bare. The chairs were empty. Perhaps it was enough, for the moment, to be in her room and to sense her presence surrounding me.
I set down my bucket beside the chest of drawers, plucked out a duster and flicked at my face in the wardrobe mirrors. I folded the duster into a pad and bullied the mottled glass to a shine. It was hard work. I pummelled until the wardrobe creaked and all the catches sprang open. There! I took a step back to allow the doors to swing on their hinges and stared towards forbidden country. A faint trace of sandalwood leaked from the darkness. The little colony of frocks and jackets swayed in surprise at my rough intrusion. In the far corner of the wardrobe a few empty coat hangers jangled together. Here before me dwelt Dorothy’s shadows, the soft, empty shells of my heart’s enchantment. How vulnerable they appeared, hanging there, secured by their shoulders! How delicate their pleats and buttons! My mouth was dry. I felt my legs tremble with my desire to fall to my knees, lift up her skirts and bury my face in her petticoats.
‘Take us,’ they whispered. ‘Take us, shake us and heal yourself in our soft embrace’.
For several moments I was conscious of nothing but the despicable urge I felt to clamber into the wardrobe and ravish its hapless inhabitants.
Ah, but doctor, I was too strong to be led astray by these wanton strumpets! I closed the doors and turned my face away from temptation. I slapped the duster against my knuckles and settled down to concentrate again on my work.
But very soon the chest of drawers began to beg for my attention. It sighed and whispered and flexed its joints. I tried to resist but I couldn’t ignore it. So I went across and fondled its heavy, polished carcass.
It groaned and spoke in a husky tone. ‘Pull open my drawer,’ it murmured. ‘I’m suffocated. I feel so tight I can barely breathe.’
No. I shook my head. No.
I tried to harden my heart as I lingered to wipe the blue china vase and dust the little stack of books; but the chest of drawers continued to moan and I felt obliged to obey its instructions. I hooked my fingers into its handles and gradually guided the top drawer towards me. It opened with a reluctant shudder and there, neatly folded and interleaved with sheets of tissue paper, I found myself confronting Dorothy’s most intimate companions!
And now, having ventured so far on my voyage of discovery, tell me what should I have done? Doctor, don’t spare your advice. Was I to remain unmoved by the sight of this forbidden orchard? Was I to retreat from that place, if not in fear of my mortal soul then for risk of discovery? Believe me, I ignored the dangers and feasted my eyes on those fragile morsels!
There was white cotton, yes, and shades of white in ivory and pearl. But there was saffron, lavender, peppermint and cinnamon. And beyond the Christian comforts of cotton there was wickedness in slithers of silk and titters of lace and satin that shone like a silver frost. Here were the panties, scanties, slips and stockings that had played such a long game of hide-and-seek with my imagination. And who would have guessed at this hoard, with its wealth of colour and sweet variety! Never once, when anchored to Dorothy, had they ever betrayed a hint of themselves. They were so very secretive and I was a stranger to them. Yet how eagerly they beckoned to be caressed, to be lifted up and nursed for a moment in my hands.
I waited until I could hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner sweeping a path across Mexico before I dared chance my arm. Then I closed my eyes, dipped between sheets of startled tissue paper and awoke to find myself, bleary as a drunkard, holding one of Dorothy’s bras in my hands.
It was larger and more majestic than anything I’d encountered cast upon Janet’s floor. It was made from some miraculous thread, smooth and translucent, embroidered with shimmering patterns of flowers. The straps were ruched and the cups, soft and seamless, trimmed with prickly toppings of lace, had been cunningly engineered with a pair of supporting, padded-wire crescents.
I fumbled to fit the hooks and eyes, one-two-three, and held it up by the shoulder straps. It dangled between my thumbs, empty yet fully-fashioned, a delicate, sculpted bust, strewn with flowers, inflated with sunlight: the living image of Dorothy. I staggered. I mewed. I was overwhelmed by the heat of my passions. Unable to restrain myself, I pressed myself to the chest of drawers, crushed her bosom pals to my mouth and collapsed the cups with kisses.
The first warning of my imminent arrest was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. It would have to be Dorothy! I was trapped. The stolen article promptly turned nasty, melted against my wrists, tangled itself in my fingers, quick as cobweb, stubborn as glue, refused to be shaken from my embrace. I struggled and sweated. I managed to fight myself free, stuff the wretched object into a nest of torn tissue paper, slam shut the drawer and turn myself on my heels at the same moment as the owner walked briskly through the door.
‘Skipper!’ She looked surprised. She hesitated. She stepped into the room and dropped her satchel onto the bed.
‘I’m sorry!’ I shouted, crazy with fright, catapulting around the walls. ‘I was looking for something!’
‘What?’
What? Love letters. A bottle of gin. What else could I hope to find hidden away in her underwear drawer?
‘Why don’t you sit down, Skipper?’ she suggested gently. She had left the bedroom door open a fraction but now moved across the room to close it. Click. Caught. There was no escape.
I was still bandy with fright but I managed somehow to guide myself into a chair and fall among the cushions.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ I stammered. ‘I came up to tidy your room and then something seemed to come over me.’ Guilty! Yes. Guilty. I plead insanity. I’m ready to confess my sins. It’s the pillory for you, my lad. Take him away. Shave his head. Bind him with bodice and panty girdle. Drag the dirty dog in chains. Parade him for public ridicule.
‘You mustn’t feel ashamed,’ she said, kneeling before me on the carpet. I was cornered. She had settled so close I could smell the peppermint on her breath. ‘Why, look, you’re trembling!’
‘You startled me,’ I said, grasping at my knees in a desperate bid to control the chorea. When my legs were quiet my teeth would chatter.
‘Skipper, calm down,’ she said urgently, taking my hot and heavy hand and pressing it between her palms. ‘I think I understand what’s been happening here.’ Her touch was cool and deliberate.
‘You do?’ I whispered.
‘Certainly,’ she smiled.
‘I couldn’t help myself!’ I bleated. Liar! The drawers protest. He was helping himself to your fancies.
‘You must never forget that the Lord can look into our hearts and already knows our most intimate secrets. You’ve grown into quite a young man and you have a healthy young appetite. The Lord has been watching you, Skipper. You are never alone in the Lord. And He understands that you’ve reached an age when sometimes you’re overwhelmed by certain strong feelings, powerful emotions, a driving force you don’t understand. There’s nothing wrong in that. It’s perfectly natural.’
‘It is?’
‘Certainly,’ she said again, giving my hand an encouraging squeeze. ‘The world is beautiful. We are beautiful. We are the intricate works of creation. And now you’re preparing yourself to explore that glorious mystery.’
‘I am?’
She nodded and gave a little toss of her head to flick the hair away from her eyes.
Oh, but she looked handsome! Her face was flushed and her mouth, no longer painted pink, was a full-blown scarlet pout. If you hadn’t known the circumstance, you’d have sworn she was trying to flirt with me.
‘You’re not angry?’ I ventured. Good grief! This woman was a saint. An angel. She was so understanding it scared me.
‘Angry? Skipper, I’m flattered!’ she laughed.
‘You are?’
‘Yes! When you love someone, you want them to share all the joy that you feel in your heart. When they reach out their hand, you want to stretch forth and embrace them.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, entirely baffled. By this time I had managed, more or less to recover my wits and was giving myself to the conversation. But it didn’t help. I couldn’t believe my ears.
‘I think the Lord has thrown us together, Skipper,’ she continued. ‘Everything has a particular purpose. But you must give me time. There are many obstacles to be confronted. There may be ridicule and rejection. Have you thought about these things?’
I couldn’t get my mouth working so I frowned and wobbled my head in a pantomime of indecision.
‘Take your time. Listen to your heart. I’ll wait for you,’ she promised, releasing me at last by leaning away from the chair. ‘You know that my door is never locked,’ she added confidentially. She stayed on the floor with her legs folded neatly beneath her skirt and propped her hands on her hips. Elbows sharpened. Spine erect. She was looking very pleased with herself.
‘I’d better be going,’ I said. I glanced quickly at the bucket, half afraid that my dusters had been transformed by magic into a big bouquet of panties. Stop thief! They cry out in shame and humiliation. He’s trying to steal us away for his dark and devilish purposes.
‘We’ll talk again.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t be ashamed of your feelings.’
‘No.’
‘By the way, did you find them?’ she asked. She seemed suddenly bashful, head cast down, combing the carpet with her fingers.
‘What?’
‘I think you know what I mean. Whatever you were searching for when I came into the room.’
The fear seized me again. I tried to rise but I couldn’t move. I stared at my feet and shook my head until my brains rattled.
‘Why don’t you look in the bottom of the chest of drawers?’
‘The chest of drawers?’ I said, with innocent surprise, turning around to look at that broad-shouldered brute as if I’d never seen it before.
She nodded and waited. ‘Aren’t you going to fetch them?’
‘Now?’
‘Why not?’
I prised myself from the chair and shuffled miserably to the chest of drawers, source of all my humiliation. And there – you’ll have guessed – I found her secret stash of Jesus comic books. There were dozens of them. Jesus Abroad. Jesus Returns. Jesus Rebukes the Pharisees.
‘Take one,’ she said. ‘And God bless you.’

EXTRACTS Wrestlers - Romantic Fiction - God - Sex - Poison Pen letters - Food and restaurants - The Literary Set

Poison Pen letters:

The attic rooms smelt stale. There were dozens of newspapers strewn on the floor. The chairs were gritty with biscuit crumbs. We had stripped the bed and cleaned the carpets before I inspected the great oak writing desk. And there, spread before me like a treasure map, was the answer to the mystery of the mutilated magazines. A pair of scissors. A large pot of pungent paper glue. A box of alphabet confetti. Franklin had been mounting a poisonous attack on the Dwarf’s reputation! He was sending anonymous letters to every literary editor and critic in the country. And every word of these scandalous diatribes had been cut and assembled from newsprint and glued to sheets of coarse blue paper. The enterprise must have taken him days of painstaking labour.
He maintained that the Dwarf HATed woMEN, huRT DOgs and had recently grown addicted to Xtreme FORMs of cHiLD PornoGraphY. He claimed that the Dwarf was a PlagiarIST and had sTolen IDEAs & eNtirE PASSages of pROSE from OtheR distinguiSHED WriTErs. He described the Dwarf as a turD a THief and a tosSPOT.
‘He’s barking mad!’ I complained.
‘What is it?’ mother muttered, without much interest, squelching to the desk and shuffling through the evidence.
‘Poison-pen letters!’ I said, stabbing at turD a THief and a tosSPOT. The tos came away on my fingertip and I had some trouble restoring it.
‘He’s always writing something,’ mother said, shaking her head. She screwed up her eyes as she tried to read one of the blue paper sheets but, to my relief, she didn’t have enough patience for it.
‘We’ve got to stop him!’ I said. ‘It’s criminal. He’ll probably get himself arrested.’ Police swoop at dawn. Break down door. Scramble upstairs. This is a raid. Men barking. Women screaming. Franklin bending the bars at the window. Accused of libel on divers occasions. Threatening behaviour. Defamation. Malicious wounding of English language.
‘Arrested?’ mother said, bewildered by the excitement. ‘But they’re nothing but a lot of nonsense!’ She surveyed the letters with a new interest. ‘Let’s throw ’em away!’ she said finally. ‘I don’t suppose they’re important.’ She began searching her apron pockets for a roll of plastic rubbish sacks.
‘No!’ I said, trying to shield the desk with my arm. ‘This is serious. If we interfere he’ll know that he’s been discovered.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, anything could happen,’ I warned. ‘We’d be involved. And if he’s caught we might be held responsible for him. And we don’t know how many of these things he’s already sent. He could have been doing it for weeks!’
‘So what’s your advice?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ I said feebly. ‘I suppose, under the circumstances, we could always pretend that it isn’t happening.’
‘Good idea!’
‘We’ll forget that we’ve seen them,’ I said, pulling away from the writing desk. ‘Did you move anything?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘He probably won’t know the difference.’
‘Scribblers!’ mother said in disgust.
We finished cleaning the rooms but were careful to leave the desk undisturbed. There was nothing we could do to save him. The letters were anonymous. And the Dwarf, unknown to Franklin, was beyond the range of his rage, on a triumphant book-promotion tour of America to trumpet the merits of Poke – an episode he would turn into his next sensational novel in which a rather clever young man embarks on a triumphant book-promotion tour of America. That book would, in its turn, provide the material for another novel in which a rather clever young man sets himself the challenge of writing a novel about a man writing a novel about a man selling a novel on a triumphant book-promotion tour of America. You couldn’t stop him. The critics and camp followers clung to him like flypapers. ‘Seek only to write from your own experience,’ was Katie Pphart’s advice to rookie writers with no elastic sewn into their imaginations and, by God, the Dwarf had taken the maxim and made it his life’s work. No hagiographer could have larded his name with more glory than the praise he heaped upon his own head.
Franklin might have chosen from half a dozen fashionable writers as the target for his abuse. The arts pages were stuffed with swaggering braggarts and hobbledehoys shouting and spitting and posing for pictures.
There was Mad Max Mullah, resident fellow of Oxford, son of a French industrialist and Moroccan socialite, who used his writing to insult people on two continents and in three different languages; and whenever challenged by his enemies to stand and fight, would claim diplomatic immunity by switching his country of origin. ‘A professional darkie,’ is how Franklin had once described him, ‘wrapped in a flag of convenience.’
There was Big Bertha Mappelthorpe, aka E B Morris, the drama critic, art collector, traveller, translator, gardener, wine expert, classical scholar and TV personality. A woman with a brain almost the size of Franklin’s huge pudding and who used her monstrous organ to write nothing but detective novels (or ‘puzzle books’ as Franklin called them) set in a world of classical scholars. She regularly infuriated Franklin by announcing from her rambling country estate that, although a literary genius, she was really just like any other plain and ordinary housewife in a string of pearls and an outsized, floral-print kaftan.
Franklin despised Mullah and Mappelthorpe but concentrated his hate on the Dwarf. I think he loathed him with such a passion because he saw in his rival some dim reflection of himself and his own vain aspirations. Whatever the reasons, Franklin was mad and dangerous.
I watched him closely over the next few days and although he remained bombastic, beneath his brittle carapace he seemed unusually nervous. The telephone startled him. A ring at the door would make him flinch and look around anxiously until the visitor had been safely identified as harmless. Even Marvel grew sorry for him, but this amounted to nothing more than a sullen silence between them. I don’t know what he’d hoped to achieve from his campaign of mischief. If the charges against the Dwarf were hollow insults then the author of the letters would be dismissed as a heckler, an idiot, another lunatic in the crowd. If the charges were published and proved to be true then the Dwarf would almost certainly enjoy a massive surge in his sales and be sent forth on a fresh publicity campaign. He wouldn’t for a moment feel ashamed. He would probably write another book. His reputation as a wildly dangerous and rather clever young man would be complete. And that reputation would be his shield. He couldn’t be slain by his enemies. But in trying to damage him it was clear that Franklin had injured himself. He grew queasy with guilt. Paralysed by his own poison. It was terrible to watch him suffer.

EXTRACTS Wrestlers - Romantic Fiction - God - Sex - Poison Pen letters - Food and restaurants - The Literary Set

Food and restaurant reviewers:

Marvel polished his cracked, brown brogues and wore his best waistcoat for the occasion. We took the bus to the outskirts of North Street Market and then walked the length of Trinidad Square until we had reached the restaurant quarter. The Snooty Artichoke was small and expensive, set apart from the street by a cordon of dusty, potted palms. Marvel looked distinctly nervous as we approached and paused to check his buttons before he pulled on the heavy steel door.
We found ourselves trapped in a narrow chamber, lit by a beam of silver light, where the major-domo stood at a lectern guarding an open, leather-bound ledger. He was dressed in black with a blue carnation for decoration. He was tall and thin as a cut-throat razor, his skin deathly pale and his dark hair slapped and slicked into shape. He raised his head to the draught from the street and stared at us in surprise. The door gave a hiss and clicked smartly shut at our heels.
There was silence.
Marvel opened his mouth to speak but no sound came from his throat. He looked so scared that I thought, for a moment, he might turn tail and take flight.
‘Marvel,’ Marvel said, at last. ‘A table for two.’
The major-domo flinched as if he’d been goosed, jerked back his head and looked at the ceiling. Then he sighed deeply, raised a bony finger and dragged his fingernail down the open page of the ledger. He studied the page for a long time. He consulted the watch on his wrist. He stared at the ledger again. Finally, and with great reluctance, he stepped from behind the lectern, adjusted his shoulders, puffed out his chest and walked us through to the dining room where he offered the comforts of a small table obscured from the general view by a clump of exotic shrubbery.
‘Une table pour deux, monsieur,’ he said. He thrust a menu into my hand, tossed his head and minced away.
‘Thank you,’ Marvel whispered and smiled meekly.
The Snooty Artichoke had been planted to look like an overblown garden. There were flame nettles and creeping figs and ferns of every description. Ivy struggled across the ceiling and hung in festoons above the tables. A salvaged wood-nymph, carved from stone, her face half-eaten by frost and rain, stood on a pedestal in one corner. The walls were darkly varnished and masked with antique trellis-work decorated at intervals by autographed pictures of actors and politicians, as if their endorsement of the food made it fit for human consumption.
I sat in silence and stared at the table. I had never encountered such rich surroundings. There were damask napkins the size of bath towels, folded into the shapes of swans. There were orchids floating in black, glass bowls. The silver flashed. The crystal sparkled and shimmered with rainbows. The menu was written in brown ink on parchment, bound in morocco with a scarlet silk cord.
‘What do you fancy?’ Marvel inquired as we peered at the menu through the artificial twilight.
‘It’s in French!’ I whispered indignantly.
‘Ignore it!’ Marvel said, with a little wag of his hand. ‘Merely designed to intimidate and irritate the gastric juices.’
‘But I can’t understand a word of it.’
‘Allow me to translate.’
The menu, once it had been unscrambled, was daunting and dangerous. There were boars’ brains with skunkweed pickle. Poached sweetbreads. Rolled tongue. Stewed lungs. Pigs’ ears stuffed with truffle.
‘What do you suggest?’ I said.
‘I suppose you might chance the fish…’ he said without enthusiasm. It was curious that he seemed to have lost all appetite for lunch but he was, it must be confessed, a very curious man.
‘The mackerel wrapped in salt cod with lobster giblet sauce?’
‘Yes. Or the sturgeons’ stomach salad with fermented apricots.’
I glanced nervously at the prices – no attempt here at Frenchification. They were printed bold and black in the local currency. ‘Isn’t this rather expensive?’ I whispered across the table.
‘Perfectly obscene,’ Marvel said. ‘For the price of an omelette in this hell hole you could buy enough chickens to start your own poultry farm.’
The Snooty Artichoke was not the most fashionable restaurant in town. The most desirable address at that time was Curly Colon’s Hamburger Bash. It was a restaurant that dealt exclusively with celebrity food. Hamburgers, hotdogs, ribs and milk shakes. Anything that didn’t require the skills of a knife and fork. It was a place of pilgrimage for film stars, sports stars, singers and TV hosts who needed to be seen clutching their hotdogs and laughing. Curly Colon had been a big rock-and-roll star until rheumatism had forced his retirement. His Hamburger Bash was a three-ring circus, a photo opportunity, a popular tourist attraction. The Snooty Artichoke, by contrast, was a strictly traditional temple to food, retaining all the old customs and rituals, where grave men in dark suits made appointments to eat their money.
‘Shall we try somewhere else?’ I suggested. I knew that he wasn’t a wealthy man and I didn’t want to embarrass him.
‘Courage!’ he whispered. ‘You may rest assured that we’re not required to pay for this folly in anything but risk of injury to our stomachs.’
I blinked and waited hopefully for some kind of explanation. But Marvel said nothing. He must have felt that the circumstances were obvious. ‘Perhaps you should explain,’ I said at last.
He stared at the ceiling. He glanced around him. ‘Think of me as a kind of agent,’ he murmured, leaning towards me.
‘Secret agent?’
‘Confidential. More of a confidential agent.’
‘You mean, like a private detective?’ I said. The mystery was solved! I was meeting Marvel the gumshoe. A man in pursuit of Nazi diamonds, hidden hoards of dangerous drugs, smuggled babies, stolen children; tormented by gangsters and tattooed hoodlums.
He shook his head. ‘We can’t talk here,’ he whispered.
I looked again at the menu. ‘What are you having?’ I asked him.
He sucked a tooth and frowned. ‘I suppose I’ll attempt the stags’ liver in oak apple sauce,’ he said finally, casting the menu aside, and then shook his head as if he already regretted it.
‘I’ll have the mackerel,’ I said cheerfully. A light lunch. Something simple. Cheap and cheerful.
‘And for an hors d’oeuvre?’
‘Is it required?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s cervilles de veau au beurre noir?’
‘Boiled brains.’
‘Oursin?’
‘Sea urchin.’
‘Knobbards avec garniture Anglaise?’
‘Knobbards?’ Marvel said suspiciously. He scowled again at the menu. ‘They’re whelks! Plain and simple. Whelks with brown bread and butter.’
‘I’ll have ’em!’ I said, much relieved.
The sommelier appeared at Marvel’s shoulder. He was old and crumpled and gave off the sour smells of the cellar. His eyes were no more than clouded glass buttons. His lips were blue and his nose very bulbous, the nostrils packed with tufts of hair. He wore a heavy silver chain about his neck and a row of medals at his chest. His chain of office seemed to weigh on him, forcing him forward, directing his gaze towards the floor, which he viewed with a bored contempt.
‘Might I recommend our Cabernet Sauvignon, monsieur?’ he murmured confidentially, tapping a finger against his nose. He might have been trying to rent out his sister. ‘A wine of great and noble vintage, aged in wood and shipped directly from the Krikova Winery on the far shores of rugged Moldova exclusively for the Artichoke. Voluptuous and bold by nature yet without a hint of vulgarity. Inquisitive yet never intrusive. Devoted yet barely dependent. Trusting yet far from innocent. Pungent yet hardly pugnacious. Confusing yet rarely confounding. In short, the perfect lunchtime companion.’
‘We’ll have a bottle,’ Marvel said and slapped the wine list shut. ‘And your largest bottle of Vichy water.’
The sommelier smirked and crept away through the undergrowth.
It seemed to take a very long time to be served with any morsel of food. The wine was presented, opened and tasted. Marvel nodded mournfully and watched the sommelier fill our glasses. I’d hoped to talk about Dorothy but the mood at the table discouraged me from trying to start a conversation. The atmosphere was stifling. The restaurant was filled by a hushed and whispering congregation, full-grown men and women, heads bowed to their plates in prayer.
We sipped at the wine in silence. I knew, from watching TV shows, that wine should taste of apricots, geraniums, walnuts, rhubarb, figs, nettles, raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and vanilla. A glass of wine was the promise of summer, the flame of winter, a kiss of sunlight, the hint of twilight, a rumour of laughter, a rush of passion. But perhaps you had to be dangerously drunk before these allusions came to mind. The wine in my mouth was terrible! Sharp as vinegar. Dark as ink. It skinned my tongue, scorched my throat and quickly started to burn my brain.
‘I don’t drink a lot of wine,’ I said, hoping I might be spared the misery of a second glass.
‘Count your blessings,’ he said.
The knobbards were finally served with ornate tongs and a slender snailing fork. They didn’t taste too bad. The narrow slices of bread and butter helped soften the sound of the sand crunching between my teeth.
When I had finished I picked at the crumbs on my plate and watched Marvel still working at a little bowl of soft-boiled brains.
‘How do they taste?’ I asked him.
He shook his head and belched. He lay down his fork, wiped his face and greedily rinsed his mouth with water.
The mackerel was delivered with much pomp and circumstance beneath a polished silver dome. When the dome was raised I was left with a grey and gelatinous sausage in a pool of pink sauce on a large white plate. The plate had been further embellished with burnished cockle shells, strands of peppered bladderwrack, gull feathers, lobster whiskers in nautical knots, kelp curlicues, octopus eyes and the claw from an unknown Dublin Bay prawn.
‘How do you find the mackerel?’ Marvel inquired, as he watched me slicing into the sausage.
‘It’s very artistic,’ I said.
‘And how does it taste?’
‘Strong,’ I said, to please him. ‘A strong taste of mackerel.’
‘And the salt-cod wrapping?’
‘Salty.’
‘And the lobster-giblet sauce?’
‘Pink,’ I said. ‘Unusually pink.’
‘Conclusion?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, for example, would you describe it as appealingly simple with charming rustic overtones/ deeply defined/ dramatically balanced/ broadly amusing/ an embarrassment of astonishments?’
‘It’s more like a mouthful of bones!’ I confessed, picking the needles from my tongue.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘An honest opinion!’
‘How do you like the liver?’
‘It’s strange but it seems to have acquired the smell of an army latrine,’ he declared. ‘And squirts blood at the prod of a fork.’
‘And the gravy?’
‘A dark and loathsome puddle,’ he said, with slightly more enthusiasm. ‘A spread of filth. A pestilence. A concentration of misery.’ He set down his knife and fork and paused to wash out his mouth with wine.
I picked at my mackerel skeleton. The meal was clearly not a success but to my surprise he didn’t seem in the least concerned. He wasn’t disappointed. He looked as if he’d expected it. And then, from the far corner of the restaurant, the owner of the Snooty Artichoke appeared with an anxious waiter pulling frantically on his sleeve. There was no mistaking him! It was Chester Chumley-Blight. His face was everywhere. He twinkled from cookery columns. He sparkled on game shows. He was a newspaper personality. He was a TV celebrity. He served seafood to stars. He tossed pancakes for charity. The waiter pointed in our direction and whispered urgently into Chumley-Blight’s ear.
‘What’s wrong?’ Marvel said, sensing my alarm.
There wasn’t time to answer him. Chumley-Blight had reached the table and was prodding Marvel in the fat of the neck with a long and beautifully manicured finger.
‘What’s your game?’ he growled. He plucked away Marvel’s napkin and threw it angrily to the floor.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Marvel said, twisting around to confront him. He sounded most indignant but I caught a glimmer of fear in his eyes.
‘We don’t take kindly to your sort of riffraff in this establishment! We don’t want it! We don’t need it! We’re in the Michelin Guide! Do I make myself understood, sunshine?’ Chumley-Blight shouted. He looked furious. He was trembling with rage. A fan of the famous black hair fell about his ears.
‘Are you asking me to leave?’
‘No! I’m telling you to piss off and don’t come back!’ Chumley-Blight shrieked, shaking the back of Marvel’s chair. A fat woman yelped and clasped her necklace. A brace of young businessmen grunted in protest. Waiters came running from every direction.
‘Now, wait a moment!’ I said, banging my fist against the table and making the cutlery jangle. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Don’t get smart with me, Sunny Jim!’ Chumley-Blight sneered as he shook Marvel from his chair. ‘I’ve launched my own range of pasta sauces!’
‘But we haven’t done anything…’ I protested. A waiter wrapped my head in his arm and pulled me to the floor.
‘Shut your gob!’ Chumley-Blight shouted.
‘I’m warning you!’ I blustered, as I found myself carried across the restaurant. ‘We shall want a written apology!’
‘Enough!’ Marvel spluttered, breaking away from his captors. ‘Enough!’ But he was quickly overwhelmed. Chumley-Blight had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him savagely from the table. A waiter took hold of his arms and another took charge of his feet. He pleaded and struggled in vain as they carried him away and tossed him into the street.
The Belcher of the Sunday Leviathan
‘Oh, filthy!’ he gasped. ‘Filthy! Disgusting and filthy!’ He jerked back his hands in disgust and wiped his fingers against his apron.
We gathered around to peer into the wrappings and there, at the bottom of the box, resting in scraps of shining, wet paper, skinned and bloody, grotesque and grinning, was a peeled sheep’s head.
‘Horrible!’ mother shuddered, clasping a hand against her mouth. She sat down hard in a chair, went very pale and fingered her cardigan buttons.
‘What does it mean?’ father whispered. He stood transfixed. He couldn’t believe it was happening. He stared down at the glistening muzzle, the mad, bulging eyes, the flared and blood-caked nostrils.
‘Throw it away!’ Marvel cried in despair.
‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Look, there’s something caught between its teeth…’
‘He’s right!’ father said, but he made no move to investigate. So I summoned all my courage and using no more than a finger and thumb, plucked a damp wad of paper from the clutch of the animal’s jaws.
It looked very much like a newspaper cutting. I gently unfolded the scrap and tried to decipher its message. The newsprint was damp and flecked with blood but I saw enough to confirm my suspicions.
‘It’s a restaurant review,’ I said, ‘by Belcher of the Sunday Leviathan.’ I glanced at Marvel but he looked away.
‘Well, read it!’ father demanded.
‘The Stuffed Owl. 159 Theobald Street,’ I began. ‘Since suffering a refurbishment at the hands of its owner, the barmy Bertie Bollinger, this deplorable restaurant with its cold, chrome fittings and walls of porcelain tiles now conveys all the atmosphere of an empty public urinal. The intolerable Italianate menu of past days has been swept away in favour of full-blown Frenchification…’ And here the print was so badly soaked with blood that I couldn’t follow it. ‘…the waiter served my Toulouse sausage,’ I continued, ‘with all the reluctance of a man who has just been forced to butcher and sell his own daughter… the offending article looked like a turd and smelt like the rump of a wet dog toasting before an open fire… secures the award as the most expensive restaurant carrot… a madhouse designed by a man who drags his knuckles when he walks… ’
‘Enough!’ Marvel cried, snatching the paper from my hand. ‘Enough!’ He thrust the scrap into his dressing-gown pocket and threw himself at the sofa where he sat with his shoulders hunched and his hands between his knees.
‘But why did they send it to this address?’ father asked. He glared at Marvel. He scowled at me. He thought he might be the victim of some elaborate hoax.
‘Mr Marvel is Belcher,’ I explained. ‘The famous restaurant critic. He writes for the Sunday Leviathan!’ Everyone knew Belcher although no picture had ever been published. The man was a legend. The scourge of chefs and scullions. A plague on preening restaurateurs and unctuous oenologists. A thorn that never failed to catch in the throats of gullible gastronomes. He was feared and revered in equal measure. A paramour. A philistine. An enemy of the connoisseur. The stomach’s gallant saviour. A man who made other restaurant critics look like snivelling sycophants.
‘That’s all very well and good,’ mother remarked soberly. ‘But that doesn’t allow him to receive bodily parts through the post.’
‘How did they find you? How did they know you were here?’ I said, turning to Marvel again.
‘Someone must have recognised me. A waiter most likely. Waiters are a cruel and cunning breed.’
‘That waiter from The Snooty Artichoke…?’
‘One of a kind from a thousand hell holes,’ he said, wagging his head. ‘I must have been followed. They must have been watching the house.’
‘They went to all this trouble just because you didn’t like the look of a sausage?’ mother said. She was very impressed. She had never imagined that cooking could provoke such passion.

EXTRACTS Wrestlers - Romantic Fiction - God - Sex - Poison Pen letters - Food and restaurants - The Literary Set

The Literary Set/1:

Franklin might have chosen from half a dozen fashionable writers as the target for his abuse. The arts pages were stuffed with swaggering braggarts and hobbledehoys shouting and spitting and posing for pictures.
There was Mad Max Mullah, resident fellow of Oxford, son of a French industrialist and Moroccan socialite, who used his writing to insult people on two continents and in three different languages; and whenever challenged by his enemies to stand and fight, would claim diplomatic immunity by switching his country of origin. ‘A professional darkie,’ is how Franklin had once described him, ‘wrapped in a flag of convenience.’
There was Big Bertha Mappelthorpe, aka E B Morris, the drama critic, art collector, traveller, translator, gardener, wine expert, classical scholar and TV personality. A woman with a brain almost the size of Franklin’s huge pudding and who used her monstrous organ to write nothing but detective novels (or ‘puzzle books’ as Franklin called them) set in a world of classical scholars. She regularly infuriated Franklin by announcing from her rambling country estate that, although a literary genius, she was really just like any other plain and ordinary housewife in a string of pearls and an outsized, floral-print kaftan.

The Literary Set/2:

‘Poke!’ Franklin shouted, making me drop my dumpling. He was in a most peculiar temper.
‘What?’
‘Poke!’
‘Poke what?’ I said.
‘Language!’ father said sharply. He rapped his fork against the rim of his plate in a bid to restore law and order.
‘Poke!’ Franklin repeated, his face seemed bruised by the fury that the word provoked in him.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s the Dwarf!’ he shouted. ‘Poke! It’s the Dwarf! He’s written another damned novel!’
There was a long silence. The Dwarf, aka Maxwell Bizarre, was a rather clever young man fresh from Oxford who had written a string of bestselling novels. His first book, Muck, had featured a rather clever young man fresh from Oxford and set adrift in a crude and stupid world. The rather clever young man is cast into a twilight zone where people are beastly to him. I don’t know what happens because I couldn’t find the energy to read beyond the third chapter. It was one of those books that has the power to make everything else in the world seem suddenly more interesting. You pick it up and read a page and find yourself thinking about the length of your fingernails, or the temperature in the room or the odd little burbling noise in your stomach. So you slip an envelope or an old bus ticket between the pages and close the book for a moment to stretch your legs and make a sandwich and you walk away and never return. Bookshelves are filled with these unwanted guests, waiting years to be boxed and discarded. But Senior Franklin despised the book as much as he despised the author. He declared that (1) the Dwarf was a plagiarist; (2) that the Dwarf knew next to nothing about the horrors of life at street level since his own short span had been one of comfort and privilege; (3) that the Dwarf had such a loose grasp on the language his publishers had been forced to employ a team of editors to shape and polish his prose; (4) that the Dwarf had carnal knowledge of children and domestic animals; (5) that the Dwarf had contrived to include amusing portraits of all his Oxford chums in the story, which had the desired effect of making said chums fight each other, tooth and claw, for the privilege of praising the book in every available literary organ. These were serious allegations. But nothing could stop the Dwarf’s progress. His other books, Spit, Jerk and Vomit had been hailed as penetrating satires on the moral decay in urban culture. Vomit had been awarded the Stanley Butler Prize for its perky, pornographic prose.
‘Poke!’ I said, breaking the silence. ‘That’s a good title. What’s it like? Do you recommend it?’ I knew he was jealous of the Dwarf’s success, it cut very deep and I wanted to twist the knife. Everyone seemed impressed by the Dwarf, including Franklin’s most loyal friend, Polenta Hartebeest.
‘It’s dog dirt!’ he shouted indignantly. ‘It’s a pompous prick-song from a dangerous, Priapic pygmy!’
‘Language!’ father warned again.
‘It’s dung! It’s offal! It plumbs new depths of banality! It’s a battological dirge of filth and fornication!’
‘So you don’t think much of it,’ I ventured.
‘I haven’t read it!’ Franklin shouted.
‘That’s very queer,’ I said. ‘I thought you read everything…’
‘They dared not take the risk of sending a copy for review. The book was strictly reserved for his sycophantic Shirlies!’
‘It’s a lot of nonsense,’ mother said, stirring her stew with a spoon. ‘Books! A lot of nonsense.’ She didn’t trust the written word. Her only weakness was Chinwag, a weekly magazine devoted to Hollywood gossip, horoscopes and picture puzzles.
‘Why don’t you just ignore it?’ father suggested. ‘You should write a good adventure yarn. That’s more like it. Everyone loves a good yarn. Think of Godfrey Bowman. I used to read a lot of Godfrey Bowman before I was married. You should write a good, old-fashioned yarn with speedboats and sports cars and poisoned fountain-pen ink and special exploding Havana cigars. Something with lots of action. A proper beginning, middle and end. Nobody wants it artsy farsty.’
Franklin looked infuriated and tried to cut his plate in half with the frantic work of his knife.
‘You mustn’t upset yourself…’ Janet said kindly.
‘What?’ He cocked his head and glared across the table.
‘Well, I was thinking…’ she began nervously and felt herself frightened into silence.
‘Come, what fragrant thought hangs suspended?’ He leaned forward by digging an elbow into the table. He could sense her discomfort. It pleased him. I wanted to puncture his lungs with my fork.

The Literary Set/3:

I was in the front parlour with Senior Franklin, who had stretched himself out in the sofa to shout and swear at the daily papers. He peered at the arts sections with particular contempt. There were rumours that the Dwarf had been nominated once again for the Stanley Butler Prize for Fiction. The rumours had goaded Franklin to new extremes of indignation. Whenever he found an offending snippet, he would tear it from the page, screw it into a soft, grey ball and stuff it into his pencil pot.
‘Laurels for the alexic!’ he barked. ‘His arrogance astonishes. His gulosity astounds!’
The Dwarf’s name had also started appearing on Lists. And this marked a new phase in his long and relentless campaign for universal recognition. His latest book had appeared on Big Bertha Mapplethorpe’s Fifty Most Important Novels of the Century list compiled for the Sunday Superior. He was mentioned in the list of Sexiest Scowlers in the Wonder Woman magazine popular readers’ poll. He was listed as Man About Town by the Trumpet Society Supplement for most appearances at literary cocktail parties in any single calendar month. He was listed in Scribbler Quarterly as having produced The Longest Sentence, written in English, in any Modern Work of Fiction. He’d been appointed to the list of the World’s Most Dazzling Dentalwork in a vote by the Hollywood Dental School. He’d even been given his own special entry in The Modern Dictionary of Expletives as the author of sixteen novel terms of abuse.
These fresh accolades, no matter how trivial, wounded Franklin and served to sharpen his misery. ‘I cannot breathe!’ he complained. ‘I cannot breathe for the stench of him!’

Click to visit the 'Mr Romance' page

About Miles Gibson

Also by Miles Gibson (published by The Do-Not Press):
The Sandman
Dancing With Mermaids
Vinegar Soup
Kingdom Swann

Click logo to buy from Amazon.co.uk